Chapter 3: Processes

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
 Process Concept
 Process – a program in execution; process execution must progress in
sequential fashion

 A process includes:
 program counter
 stack
 data section

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 3.2 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
 The Process
 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
 Program is passive entity, 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 – 8th Edition 3.3 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
 Process in Memory

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 3.4 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
 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 – 8th Edition 3.5 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
 Diagram of Process State

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 3.6 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
 Process Control Block (PCB)
Information associated with each process
 Process state
 Program counter
 CPU registers
 CPU scheduling information
 Memory-management information
 Accounting information
 I/O status information

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 3.7 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
 Process Control Block (PCB)

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 3.8 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
 CPU Switch From Process to Process

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 3.9 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
 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 – 8th Edition 3.10 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
 Ready Queue And Various
I/O Device Queues

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 3.11 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
 Representation of Process Scheduling

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 3.12 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
 Schedulers

 Long-term scheduler (or job scheduler) – selects which processes

should be brought into the ready queue
 Short-term scheduler (or CPU scheduler) – selects which process
should be executed next and allocates CPU
 Sometimes the only scheduler in a system

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 3.13 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
 Schedulers (Cont.)
 Short-term scheduler is invoked very frequently (milliseconds)  (must be
fast)

 Long-term scheduler is invoked very 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

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 3.14 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
 Addition of Medium Term Scheduling

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 3.15 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
 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 -> 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 – 8th Edition 3.16 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
 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
 Parent and children share all resources
 Children share subset of parent’s resources
 Parent and child share no resources

 Execution
 Parent and children execute concurrently
 Parent waits until children terminate

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 3.17 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
 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 – 8th Edition 3.18 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
 Process Creation

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 3.19 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
 C Program Forking Separate Process
#include <sys/types.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <unistd.h>
int main()
{
pid_t pid;
/* fork another process */
pid = fork();
if (pid < 0) { /* error occurred */
fprintf(stderr, "Fork Failed");
return 1;
}
else if (pid == 0) { /* child process */
execlp("/bin/ls", "ls", NULL);
}
else { /* parent process */
/* parent will wait for the child */
wait (NULL);
printf ("Child Complete");
}
return 0;
Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition } 3.20 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
 Process Termination
 Process executes last statement and asks the operating system to delete it
(exit)
 Output data from child to parent (via wait)
 Process’ resources are deallocated by operating system

 Parent may terminate execution of children processes (abort)

 Child has exceeded allocated resources
 Task assigned to child is no longer required
 If parent is exiting
 Some operating systems do not allow child to continue if its parent
terminates
– All children terminated - cascading termination

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 3.21 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
 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 – 8th Edition 3.22 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
 Communications Models

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 3.23 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
 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 – 8th Edition 3.24 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
 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 – 8th Edition 3.25 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
 Bounded-Buffer –
Shared-Memory Solution

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

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

 Solution is correct, but can only use BUFFER_SIZE-1 elements

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 3.26 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
 Bounded-Buffer – Producer

while (true) {
/* Produce an item */
while (( (in + 1) % BUFFER SIZE count) == out)
; /* do nothing -- no free buffers */
buffer[in] = item;
in = (in + 1) % BUFFER SIZE;
}

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 3.27 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
 Bounded Buffer – Consumer

while (true) {
while (in == out)
; // do nothing -- nothing to consume

// remove an item from the buffer

item = buffer[out];
out = (out + 1) % BUFFER SIZE;
return item;
}

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 3.28 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
 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) – message size fixed or variable
 receive(message)
 If P and Q wish to communicate, they need to:
 establish a communication link between them
 exchange messages via send/receive
 Implementation of communication link
 physical (e.g., shared memory, hardware bus)
 logical (e.g., logical properties)

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 3.29 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
 Implementation Questions
 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 – 8th Edition 3.30 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
 Direct Communication
 Processes must name each other explicitly:
 send (P, message) – send a message to process P
 receive(Q, message) – receive a message from process Q

 Properties of communication link

 Links are established automatically
 A link is associated with exactly one pair of communicating processes
 Between each pair there exists exactly one link
 The link may be unidirectional, but is usually bi-directional

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 3.31 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
 Indirect Communication
 Messages are directed and received from mailboxes (also referred to as ports)
 Each mailbox has a unique id
 Processes can communicate only if they share a mailbox

 Properties of communication link

 Link established only if processes share a common mailbox
 A link may be associated with many processes
 Each pair of processes may share several communication links
 Link may be unidirectional or bi-directional

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 3.32 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
 Indirect Communication
 Operations
 create a new mailbox
 send and receive messages through mailbox
 destroy a mailbox

 Primitives are defined as:

send(A, message) – send a message to mailbox A
receive(A, message) – receive a message from mailbox A

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 3.33 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
 Indirect Communication
 Mailbox sharing
 P1, P2, and P3 share mailbox A
 P1, sends; P2 and P3 receive
 Who gets the message?

 Solutions
 Allow a link to be associated with at most two processes
 Allow only one process at a time to execute a receive operation
 Allow the system to select arbitrarily the receiver. Sender is notified who
the receiver was.

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 3.34 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
 Synchronization
 Message passing may be either blocking or non-blocking

 Blocking is considered synchronous

 Blocking send has the sender block until the message is received
 Blocking receive has the receiver block until a message is available

 Non-blocking is considered asynchronous

 Non-blocking send has the sender send the message and continue
 Non-blocking receive has the receiver receive a valid message or null

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 3.35 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
 Buffering
 Queue of messages attached to the link; implemented in one of three ways
1. Zero capacity – 0 messages
Sender must wait for receiver (rendezvous)
2. Bounded capacity – finite length of n messages
Sender must wait if link full
3. Unbounded capacity – infinite length
Sender never waits

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 3.36 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
 End of Chapter 3

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009