PROCESS MANAGEMENT

Module-2
by
S Pramod Kumar
Assistant Professor,
[Link] ECE,KIT,
Tiptur

 OS View of Processes
 PCB
 Fundamental State Transitions,
 Threads, Kernel and User level Threads,
 Non-preemptive scheduling- FCFS and SRN
 Preemptive Scheduling- RR and LCN
 Long term, medium term and short term
scheduling in a time sharing system

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  A program is a set of functions and
procedures
 Functions may be separate processes, or they
may constitute the code part of a single process

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 In Operating System’s view, a processes is an execution of a

program
 A process comprises six components:
 (id, code, data, stack, resources, CPU state)
 where
 id is the unique id assigned by the OS
 code is the code of the program (it is also called the text of a program)
 data is the data used in the execution of the program, including data
from files
 stack contains parameters of functions and procedures called during
execution of the program, and their return addresses
 resources is the set of resources allocated by the OS
 CPU state is composed of contents of the PSW and the general-
purpose registers (GPRs) of the CPU (we assume that the stack pointer
is maintained in a GPR)
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 OS view of a process consists of two parts:
[Link], data, and stack of the process, and
information concerning memory and other
resources, such as files, allocated to it.

[Link] concerning execution of a program,

such as the process state, the CPU state including
the stack pointer

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 Context save function:
 Saves CPU state in PCB, and saves information
concerning context
 Changes process state from running to ready

 Scheduling function:
 Uses process state information from PCBs to select a
ready process for execution and passes its id to
dispatching function

 Dispatching function:
 Sets up context of process, changes its state to
running, and loads saved CPU state from PCB into
CPU
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Fundamental functions to control processes

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 An OS contains two processes P1 and P2, with P2 having a higher priority
than P1. Let P2 be blocked on an I/O operation and let P1 be running. The
following actions take place when the I/O completion event occurs for the
I/O operation of P2:

1. The context save function is performed for P1 and its state is changed to
ready.

2. Using the event information field of PCBs, the event handler finds that the
I/O operation was initiated by P2, so it changes the state of P2 from blocked
to ready.

3. Scheduling is performed. P2 is selected because it is the highest-priority

ready process.
4. P2’s state is changed to running and it is dispatched.
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 The newly scheduled process may not have

any part of its address space in the cache, and
so it may perform poorly until it builds
sufficient information in the cache

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 A state transition for a process is a change in

its state
 Caused by the occurrence of some event such as
the start or end of an I/O operation

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• A system contains two processes P1 and P2, P1 CPU bust time
15msec Followed by I/O operation for 100msec. P2 bust
time 30msec Followed by I/O operation for 60msec

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 Process switching overhead

 Intrinsic reasons (execution related overhead)
 OS reasons (resource use related overhead)

 Overhead can be reduced by using threads

within processes

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 A thread is an alternative model of program
execution
 A process creates a thread through a system
call
 Thread operates within process context
 Switching between threads incurs less
overhead than switching between processes

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 Threads incur smaller context switching

overhead
Q: How is this achieved?

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 A process context switch involves:
1. saving the context of the process in operation
2. saving its CPU state
3. loading the state of the new process
4. loading its CPU state
 A threads is a program execution within the
context of a process; many threads can be
created within the same process
 Switching between threads of the same process
involves much less context switching overhead
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 Where are threads useful?

 If two processes share the same address
space and the same resources, they have
identical context
-- switching between these processes
involves saving and reloading of their
contexts. This overhead is redundant.
 In such situations, it is better to use threads.

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 Kernel-Level Threads
 Threads are managed by the kernel
 User-Level Threads
 Threads are managed by thread library
 Hybrid Threads
 Combination of kernel-level and user-level
threads

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 A kernel-level thread is like a process except that

it has a smaller amount of state information
 Switching between threads of same process
incurs the overhead of event handling
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  Fast thread switching because kernel is not involved
 Blocking of a thread, blocks all threads of the process
 Threads of a process: No concurrency or parallelism
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• Can provide a combination of parallelism and low overhead

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 A process is a model of execution of a
program
 Can create other processes by making requests to
the OS through system calls
▪ Each of these processes is called its child process

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 To control operation of the process, OS uses

notion of a process state
 Ready, running, blocked, terminated, suspended
 OS keeps information concerning each process
in a process control block (PCB)
 Process state and CPU state associated with process
 Scheduler selects a ready process and dispatcher
switches CPU to selected process through
information found in its process context and the PCB

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 A thread is an alternative model of execution of
a program
 Overhead of switching between threads is much less
than the overhead of switching between processes
 Three models of threads:
 Kernel-level threads
 User-level threads
 Hybrid threads
 Thread models have different implications for
switching overhead, concurrency, and
parallelism

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Scheduling Terminology and Concepts
• Scheduling is the activity of selecting the next
request to be serviced by a server
– In an OS, a request is the execution of a job or a
process, and the server is the CPU

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Scheduling Terminology and Concepts

(continued)

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• Turnaround time (ta) Time between the submission of a job
or process and its completion by the system. This concept is
meaningful for noninteractive jobs or processes only.

• Weighted turnaround (w) Ratio of the turnaround time of a

job or process to its own service time.

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• A server always services a scheduled request

to completion
• Attractive because of its simplicity
• Some nonpreemptive scheduling policies:
– First-come, first-served (FCFS) scheduling
– Shortest request next (SRN) scheduling

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FCFS Scheduling

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 Shortest Request Next (SRN)
Scheduling

May cause
starvation of
long processes

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Preemptive Scheduling Policies

• In preemptive scheduling, server can switch to
next request before completing current one
– Preempted request is put back into pending list
– Its servicing is resumed when it is scheduled again
• A request may be scheduled many times before it
is completed
– Larger scheduling overhead than with nonpreemptive
scheduling
• Used in multiprogramming and time-sharing OSs
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Round-Robin Scheduling with Time-

Slicing (RR) In this example, δ = 1

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 Example: Variation of Response Time
in RR Scheduling
• rt for a request may be higher for smaller
values of δ
Time slice 5 ms 10 ms 15 ms 20 ms
Average rt for subsequent subrequest (ms) 280 240 240 220

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Least Completed Next (LCN)

Issues:
- Short processes will finish
ahead of long processes
- Starves long processes of
CPU attention
- Neglects existing processes
if new processes keep
arriving in the system

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 Scheduling in Practice
• To provide a suitable combination of system
performance and user service, OS has to adapt its
operation to the nature and number of user
requests and availability of resources
– A single scheduler using a classical scheduling policy
cannot address all these issues effectively
• Modern OSs employ several schedulers
– Up to three schedulers
• Some of the schedulers may use a combination of
different scheduling policies
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• These schedulers perform the following

functions:
– Long-term: Decides when to admit an arrived process
for scheduling, depending on:
• Nature (whether CPU-bound or I/O-bound)
• Availability of resources
– Medium-term: Decides when to swap out a process
from memory and when to load it back, so that a
sufficient number of ready processes are in memory
– Short-term: Decides which ready process to service
next on the CPU and for how long
• Also called the process scheduler, or scheduler
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Example: Long, Medium-, and Short-
Term Scheduling in Time-Sharing

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