Chapter 2: Processes

Course Instructors: Dr. Lanka, Dr. Nay, Aj. Thinzar

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

 Chapter 2: 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
 Objectives
 To introduce the notion of a process -- a program
in execution, which forms the basis of all
computation
 To describe the various features of processes,
including scheduling, creation and termination,
and communication
 To explore interprocess communication using
shared memory and message passing

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.3 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Multitasking in Mobile Systems
 Some mobile systems (e.g., early version of iOS)
allow only one process to run, others suspended
 Due to screen real estate, user interface limits iOS
provides for a
 Single foreground process- controlled via user
interface
 Multiple background processes– in memory,
running, but not on the display, and with limits
 Limits include single, short task, receiving
notification of events, specific long-running tasks
like audio playback
 Android runs foreground and background, with fewer
limits
 Background process uses a service to perform
tasks
 Service can keep running even if background
process is suspended
 Service has no user interface,
Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.4
small memory useGalvin and Gagne
Silberschatz,
 Context Switch
 When CPU switches to another process, the system
must save the state of the old process and load the
saved state for the new process via a context
switch
 Context of a process represented in the PCB
 Context-switch time is overhead; the system does
no useful work while switching
 The more complex the OS and the PCB  the
longer the context switch
 Time dependent on hardware support
 Some hardware provides multiple sets of
registers per CPU  multiple contexts loaded at
once

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.5 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Operations on Processes

 System must provide mechanisms for:

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

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.6 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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 3.7 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 A Tree of Processes

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.8 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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 3.9 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 C Program Forking Separate Process

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.10 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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 3.11 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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 3.12 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Multiprocess Architecture – Chrome Browser

 Many web browsers ran as single process (some still

do)
 If one web site causes trouble, entire browser can
hang or crash
 Google Chrome Browser is multiprocess with 3
different types of processes:
 Browser process manages user interface, disk and
network I/O
 Renderer process renders web pages, deals with
HTML, Javascript. A new renderer created for each
website opened
 Runs in sandbox restricting disk and network I/O,
minimizing effect of security exploits
 Plug-in process for each type of plug-in

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.13 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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 3.14 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Communications Models
(a) Message passing. (b) shared memory.

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.15 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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 3.16 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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 3.17 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne