Chapter 3: Processes

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Chapter 3: Processes
 Process Concept
 Process Scheduling
 Operations on Processes
 Interprocess Communication
 Examples of IPC Systems
 Communication in Client-Server Systems

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.2 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Process Concept
 An operating system executes a variety of programs:
 Batch system – jobs
 Time-shared systems – user programs or tasks
 Textbook uses the terms job and process almost interchangeably
 Process – a program in execution; process execution must
progress in sequential fashion
 Multiple parts
 The program code, also called text section
 Current activity including program counter, processor
registers
 Stack containing temporary data
 Function parameters, return addresses, local variables
 Data section containing global variables
 Heap containing memory dynamically allocated during run time

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.3 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Process Concept (Cont.)
 Program is passive entity stored on disk (executable file),
process is active
 Program becomes process when executable file loaded into
memory
 Execution of program started via GUI mouse clicks, command
line entry of its name, etc
 One program can be several processes
 Consider multiple users executing the same program

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.4 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Process in Memory

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.5 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Process State

 As a process executes, it changes state

 new: The process is being created
 running: Instructions are being executed
 waiting: The process is waiting for some event to occur
 ready: The process is waiting to be assigned to a processor
 terminated: The process has finished execution

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.6 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Diagram of Process State

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.7 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Process Control Block (PCB)
Information associated with each process
(also called task control block)
 Process state – running, waiting, etc
 Program counter – location of instruction
to next execute
 CPU registers – contents of all process-
centric registers
 CPU scheduling information- priorities,
scheduling queue pointers
 Memory-management information –
memory allocated to the process
 Accounting information – CPU used,
clock time elapsed since start, time limits
 I/O status information – I/O devices
allocated to process, list of open files

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.8 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 CPU Switch From Process to Process

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.9 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Threads
 So far, process has a single thread of execution
 Consider having multiple program counters per process
 Multiple locations can execute at once
 Multiple threads of control -> threads
 Must then have storage for thread details, multiple program
counters in PCB.

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.10 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Process Scheduling

 Maximize CPU use, quickly switch processes onto CPU

for time sharing
 Process scheduler selects among available processes
for next execution on CPU
 Maintains scheduling queues of processes
 Job queue – set of all processes in the system
 Ready queue – set of all processes residing in main
memory, ready and waiting to execute
 Device queues – set of processes waiting for an I/O
device
 Processes migrate among the various queues

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.11 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Ready Queue And Various I/O Device Queues

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.12 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Representation of Process Scheduling

 Queueing diagram represents queues, resources, flows

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.13 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Schedulers
 Short-term scheduler (or CPU scheduler) – selects which process should
be executed next and allocates CPU
 Sometimes the only scheduler in a system
 Short-term scheduler is invoked frequently (milliseconds)  (must be
fast)
 Long-term scheduler (or job scheduler) – selects which processes should
be brought into the ready queue
 Long-term scheduler is invoked infrequently (seconds, minutes)  (may
be slow)
 The long-term scheduler controls the degree of multiprogramming
 Processes can be described as either:
 I/O-bound process – spends more time doing I/O than computations,
many short CPU bursts
 CPU-bound process – spends more time doing computations; few very
long CPU bursts
 Long-term scheduler strives for good process mix

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.14 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Addition of Medium Term Scheduling
 Medium-term scheduler can be added if degree of multiple
programming needs to decrease
 Remove process from memory, store on disk, bring back in
from disk to continue execution: swapping

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.15 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Operations on Processes

 System must provide mechanisms for:

 process creation,
 process termination,
 and so on as detailed next

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.16 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Process Creation
 Parent process create children processes, which, in turn
create other processes, forming a tree of processes
 Generally, process identified and managed via a process
identifier (pid)
 Resource sharing options
 Parent and children share all resources
 Children share subset of parent’s resources
 Parent and child share no resources
 Execution options
 Parent and children execute concurrently
 Parent waits until children terminate

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.17 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Process Creation (Cont.)
 Address space
 Child duplicate of parent
 Child has a program loaded into it
 UNIX examples
 fork() system call creates new process
 exec() system call used after a fork() to replace the
process’ memory space with a new program

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.18 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Process Termination

 Process executes last statement and then asks the operating

system to delete it using the exit() system call.
 Returns status data from child to parent (via wait())
 Process’ resources are deallocated by operating system
 Parent may terminate the execution of children processes using
the abort() system call. Some reasons for doing so:
 Child has exceeded allocated resources
 Task assigned to child is no longer required
 The parent is exiting and the operating systems does not
allow a child to continue if its parent terminates

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.19 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Process Termination

 Some operating systems do not allow child to exists if its parent has
terminated. If a process terminates, then all its children must also
be terminated.
 cascading termination. All children, grandchildren, etc. are
terminated.
 The termination is initiated by the operating system.
 The parent process may wait for termination of a child process by
using the wait()system call. The call returns status information
and the pid of the terminated process
pid = wait(&status);
 If no parent waiting (did not invoke wait()) process is a zombie
 If parent terminated without invoking wait , process is an orphan

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.20 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Develop a c program to implement the Process system calls (fork (),
exec(), wait(), create process, terminate process)
Algorithm Steps
This program helps to create the process, execute the process and
terminate the process.
In the case of fork() command process
 Parent and child will be created.
 parent will wait till the child execution.
 child will execute the process, exit the execution and wait.

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.21 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Interprocess Communication
 Processes within a system may be independent or cooperating
 Cooperating process can affect or be affected by other processes,
including sharing data
 Reasons for cooperating processes:
 Information sharing
 Computation speedup
 Modularity
 Convenience
 Cooperating processes need interprocess communication (IPC)
 Two models of IPC
 Shared memory
 Message passing

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.22 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Communications Models
(a) Message passing. (b) shared memory.

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.23 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Cooperating Processes
 Independent process cannot affect or be affected by the execution
of another process
 Cooperating process can affect or be affected by the execution of
another process
 Advantages of process cooperation
 Information sharing
 Computation speed-up
 Modularity
 Convenience

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.24 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Producer-Consumer Problem
 Paradigm for cooperating processes, producer process
produces information that is consumed by a consumer
process
 unbounded-buffer places no practical limit on the size
of the buffer
 bounded-buffer assumes that there is a fixed buffer
size

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.25 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Producer-Consumer Problem

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.26 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Producer-Consumer Problem
 Producer consumer problem is a synchronization problem. There
is a fixed size buffer where the producer produces items and that
is consumed by a consumer process.

 One solution to the producer consumer problem uses shared

memory.

 To allow producer and consumer processes to run concurrently,

there must be available a buffer of items that can be filled by the
producer and emptied by the consumer.

 The producer and consumer must be synchronized, so that the

consumer does not try to consume an item that has not yet been
produced.
Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.27 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Producer-Consumer Problem
Algorithm
1. The Semaphore mutex, full & empty are initialized.
2. In the case of producer process
 Produce an item in to temporary variable.
If there is empty space in the buffer check the mutex value for
enter into the critical section.
If the mutex value is 0, allow the producer to add value in the
temporary variable to the buffer.

4. In the case of consumer process

 It should wait if the buffer is empty
 If there is any item in the buffer check for mutex value, if the
mutex==0, remove item from buffer
 Signal the mutex value and reduce the empty value by 1.
Consume the item. Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
Operating System Concepts – 9 Edition
th 3.28
 Bounded-Buffer – Shared-Memory Solution

 Shared data
#define BUFFER_SIZE 10
typedef struct {
. . .
} item;

item buffer[BUFFER_SIZE];
int in = 0;
int out = 0;

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.29 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Bounded-Buffer – Producer

item next_produced;
while (true) {
/* produce an item in next produced */
while (((in + 1) % BUFFER_SIZE) == out)
; /* do nothing */
buffer[in] = next_produced;
in = (in + 1) % BUFFER_SIZE;
}

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.30 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Bounded Buffer – Consumer

item next_consumed;
while (true) {
while (in == out)
; /* do nothing */
next_consumed = buffer[out];
out = (out + 1) % BUFFER_SIZE;

/* consume the item in next consumed */

}

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.31 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Interprocess Communication – Shared Memory

 An area of memory shared among the processes that wish

to communicate
 The communication is under the control of the users
processes not the operating system.
 Major issues is to provide mechanism that will allow the
user processes to synchronize their actions when they
access shared memory.
 Synchronization is discussed in great details in Chapter 5.

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.32 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Interprocess Communication – Message Passing

 Mechanism for processes to communicate and to synchronize

their actions

 Message system – processes communicate with each other

without resorting to shared variables

 IPC facility provides two operations:

 send(message)
 receive(message)

 The message size is either fixed or variable

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.33 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Message Passing (Cont.)

 If processes P and Q wish to communicate, they need to:

 Establish a communication link between them
 Exchange messages via send/receive
 Implementation issues:
 How are links established?
 Can a link be associated with more than two processes?
 How many links can there be between every pair of
communicating processes?
 What is the capacity of a link?
 Is the size of a message that the link can accommodate fixed or
variable?
 Is a link unidirectional or bi-directional?

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.34 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Message Passing (Cont.)

 Implementation of communication link

 Physical:
 Shared memory
 Hardware bus
 Network
 Logical:
 Direct or indirect
 Synchronous or asynchronous
 Automatic or explicit buffering

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.35 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013