Unit - 2: Processes

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

 Process Concept
 Process Scheduling
 Operations on Processes

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.
• A process will need certain resources such as CPU time, memory, files
and I/O devices to accomplish its task.
 A process includes:
 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 (e.g. mail program, Word Processor
etc.)
 A process is the unit of work and modern
computer system allow multiple programs to be
loaded into memory and executed concurrently.

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.4 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Program Vs Process
Point Program Process

Definition A set of instructions written to An instance of a program being

perform a specific task. executed.
State Static; exists as code on disk Dynamic; exists in memory and
or in has a state (e.g., running,
waiting).
Resources Does not require system Requires CPU time, memory, and
resources when not running. other resources during execution.

Independence Exists independently and is Can operate concurrently with

not executing. other processes.
Interaction Does not interact with other Can interact with other processes
programs or the system. and the operating system through
system calls and inter-process
communication

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
 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 3.10 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Ready Queue And Various I/O Device Queues

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.11 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Representation of Process Scheduling

 Queueing diagram represents queues, resources, flows

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.12 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 3.13 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 3.14 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 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 3.15 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Operations on Processes

 System must provide mechanisms for:

 process creation,
 process termination,

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
 A Tree of Processes in Linux

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.18 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 3.19 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 3.20 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 3.21 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 End of Processes

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