Process Control
Block
Process Management
Process management involves tasks related to
processing like creation, scheduling,
termination, deadlock, etc.
The operating systems allocate resources that
allow the process to exchange information.
It synchronizes among processes and
safeguards the resources of other processes.
Process Control Block
Process Control Block-
Process Control Block (PCB) is a data structure that
stores information about a particular process.
This information is required by the CPU while executing
the process.
Each process is identified by its own process control
block (PCB).
It is also called as context of the process.
Diagrammatic
Representation
1. Process Id-
Process Id s a unique Id that identifies each
process of the system uniquely.
A process Id is assigned to each process during
its creation.
2. Program Counter-
Program counter specifies the address of the instruction to
be executed next.
Before execution, program counter is initialized with the
address of the first instruction of the program.
After executing an instruction, value of program counter is
automatically incremented to point to the next instruction.
This process repeats till the end of the program.
3. Process State-
•Each process goes through different states during its lifetime.
•Process state specifies the current state of the process.
4. Priority-
•Priority specifies how urgent is to execute the process.
•Process with the highest priority is allocated the CPU first
among all the processes.
5. General Purpose Registers-
General purpose registers are used to hold the data of
process generated during its execution.
Each process has its own set of registers which are
maintained by its PCB.
6. List of Open Files-
Each process requires some files which must be present
in the main memory during its execution.
PCB maintains a list of files used by the process during
its execution.
7. List of Open Devices-
PCB maintains a list of open devices used by the process
during its execution.