Chapter 3: Processes

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition,! Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009!
 Chapter 3: Processes

■ Process Concept"
■ Process Scheduling"
■ Operations on Processes"
■ Interprocess Communication"

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition! 3.2! Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009!
 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"

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition! 3.3! Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009!
 Process Concept

■ An operating system executes a variety of programs,

what to call all the CPU activities?"
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"

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition! 3.4! Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009!
 Process Concept

■ A process includes:"
● program counter "
● Stack (ex. return address)"
● data section "
● Text (code)"
● Heap (memory that is dynamically allocated during
process run time) "

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition! 3.5! Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009!
 Process in Memory

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition! 3.6! 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 (such as I/O)"
● ready: The process is waiting to be assigned
to a processor"
● terminated: The process has finished
execution"

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition! 3.7! Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009!
 Diagram of Process State

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition! 3.8! Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009!
 Process Control Block (PCB)

■ Each process is represented in the OS by PCB. It is data

structure called the process control block (PCB) that
holds all this stuff"
● The PCB is identified by an integer process ID (PID)"
● It is a “snapshot” of the execution and protection
environment"
Only one PCB active at a time"
●
■ OS keeps all of a process’s hardware execution state in
the PCB when the process isn’t running"
● PC, SP, registers, etc."
● when a process is unscheduled, the state is
transferred out of the hardware into the PCB"

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition! 3.9! Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009!
 Process Control Block (PCB)
Information associated with each process"
■ Process state: new, ready, running, waiting, halted."
■ Program counter: the address of the next instruction
to be executed for this process."
■ CPU registers: accumulators, Index registers, SP,
must be saved when an interrupt occurs to allow the
process to be continued correctly afterward."
■ CPU scheduling information: ex. process priority."
■ Memory-management information: ex. the value of
the base and limit registers."
■ Accounting information: ex. process number."
■ I/O status information: ex. List of I/O devices
allocated to the process , list of open files."
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Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition! 3.10!

"
 Process Control Block (PCB)

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition! 3.11! Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009!
 CPU Switch From Process to Process

■ 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"
"
■ The act of switching the CPU from one process
to another is called a context switch.

■ Context-switch time is overhead; the system does no

useful work while switching"
"
■ Time dependent on hardware support"

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition! 3.12! Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009!
 CPU Switch From Process to Process

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition! 3.13! Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009!
 Process Scheduling Queues

■ The process scheduler selects an available

process( from a set of several available
processes) for program execution on the CPU.!
■ 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 (each device has its own device
queue)"
■ Processes migrate among the various queues"

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition! 3.14! Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009!
 Ready Queue And Various I/O Device Queues

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition! 3.15! Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009!
 Representation of Process Scheduling
(queuing diagram)

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition! 3.16! Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009!
 Schedulers

■ Long-term scheduler (or job scheduler) –

selects which processes should be brought into
the ready queue and load them into memory."
■ Short-term scheduler (or CPU scheduler) –
selects which process should be executed next
and allocates CPU"

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition! 3.17! Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009!
 Addition of Medium Term Scheduling

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition! 3.18! 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 (the number of processes in
memory).!

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition! 3.19! Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009!
 Schedulers (Cont)

■ 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"
■ The long term scheduler should select a good
process mix of I/O bound and CPU-bound
processes."

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition! 3.20! Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009!
 Operations on the processes
1-Process Creation
■ a process may create several new processes, via a
create-process system call. "
■ Parent process create children processes, which, in
turn create other processes, forming a tree of processes"
■ Most O.S. identify process and managed via a unique
process identifier (pid) (an integer number)."
"

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition! 3.21! Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009!
 Operations on the processes
1-Process Creation
■ A process will need resources (CPU time, memory, fileI/
O devices) to accomplish its task. "
■ When a process creates a subprocess, that subprocess
may be:"
Ø able to obtain its resources directly from O.S."
Ø Resource sharing"
u Parent and children share all resources"
u Children share subset of parent’s resources"
u Parent and child share no resources"
■ Execution"
● Parent and children execute concurrently"
● Parent waits until some or all children terminate"
Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition! 3.22! Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009!

"
 Process Creation (Cont)

■ Address space"
● Child duplicate of parent (it has the same program
and data as the parent)."
● Child has a new program loaded into it"
■ UNIX examples"
● fork system call creates new process (copy of the
address space of the original process)."
● exec system call used after a fork to replace the
process’ memory space with a new program"
● Wait() the parent waits for the child process to
complete."
● Exit().!
Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition! 3.23! Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009!
 Process Creation

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition! 3.24! Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009!
 A tree of processes on a typical Solaris

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition! 3.25! Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009!
 2- Process Termination

■ A Process terminates when it finishes executing its last

statement and asks the operating system to delete it by
using the (exit) system call."
● Return a value from child to parent (via wait)"
● Process’ resources are deallocated by operating
system"

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition! 3.26! Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009!
 2- Process Termination

■ 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 system do not allow child to
continue if its parent terminates"
– All children terminated - cascading termination!

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition! 3.27! Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009!
 Interprocess Communication
■ Independent process cannot affect or be affected by the
execution of another process!
■ Cooperating process can affect or be affected by other
processes, including sharing data"

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition! 3.28! Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009!
 Interprocess Communication
■ Reasons for cooperating processes:"
● Information sharing (ex.: shared file)"
● Computation speedup (break up process into sub
tasks to run faster and can be achieved only if the
computer has multiple processing elements – CPUs or
I/O channels)"
● Modularity (dividing system functions into separate
processes or threads)"
● Convenience (individual user may work on many tasks
at the same time could be editing, printing, and
compiling in parallel)"

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition! 3.29! Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009!
 Interprocess Communication
■ Mechanism for processes to communicate and to synchronize
their actions"
■ Two models of IPC:"
!1) shared memory!
"cooperating processes exchange information by reading and
writing data to a shared region of memory."
"* allows maximum speed and convenience of communication."
"* faster than message passing (system calls only to establish
the region. All accesses are routine memory accesses, no
assistance from the kernel)."
!"

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition! 3.30! Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009!
 Interprocess Communication
■ Mechanism for processes to communicate and to synchronize
their actions"
■ Two models of IPC:"
!2) message passing!
"messages are exchanged between the cooperating processes"
"* useful for exchanging smaller amounts of data."
"* easier to implement than is shared memory for
intercomputer communications."
* implemented using system calls (more time, kernel
intervention)."

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition! 3.31! Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009!
 Communications Models

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition! 3.32! Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009!
 Shared memory system

■ IPC using shared memory requires communicating

processes to establish region of shared memory."
■ The region resides in the address space of the process
creating the shared memory segment."
■ Shared memory requires that two or more processes
agree to remove the restriction."
■ Exchange information by reading and writing data in the
shared area."
■ The processes are responsible for ensuring that they are
not writing to the same location simultaneously."

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition! 3.33! Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009!
 Producer-Consumer Problem
■ A common Paradigm for cooperating processes, producer
process produces information that is consumed by a
consumer process."
■ Ex. The assembler produce object modules, which are
consumed by the loader."
■ Ex. Web server produces(provides) HTML files and
images, which are consumed (read) by the web browser
requesting the resource."
■ One solution to the producer-consumer problem uses
shared memory."
■ To Allow the P and C processes to run concurrently, we
must have a buffer that can be filled by the P and emptied
by the C."
■ This buffer reside in a region of memory that is shared by
the P and C processes."
Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition! 3.34! Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009!
 Producer-Consumer Problem

■ The P and C must be synchronized, so that the C does

not try to consume an item that has not yet been
produced.!
■ Two types of buffers:!
! unbounded-buffer places no practical limit on the
size of the buffer"
(the C may wait, the P can always produce new
items)"
! bounded-buffer assumes that there is a fixed buffer
size"
( the C must wait if buffer empty, the P must wait if
the buffer is full).
Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition! 3.35! Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009!
 Interprocess Communication – Message Passing

■ Provides a Mechanism for processes to communicate

and to synchronize their actions."
■ Message system – processes communicate with each
other without resorting to shared variables."
■ IPC message-passing facility provides two operations:"
● send(message) – message size fixed or variable "
● receive(message)"

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition! 3.36! Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009!
 Interprocess Communication – Message Passing

■ If processes 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! 3.37! 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! 3.38! Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009!
 Interprocess Communication – Message
Passing

■ Several methods for logically implementing a link, and
the send()/receive() operations :"
● Direct or indirect communication."
● Synchronous or asynchronous communication."
● Automatic or explicit buffering.

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition! 3.39! 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"
■ The Properties of the communication link:"
● Links are established automatically between every pair
of processes that want to communicate. The processes
need to know only each other’s identity to
communicate."
● 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"
th
Operating System Concepts – 8 Edition! 3.40! 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, with each link corresponding
to one mailbox."
● Link may be unidirectional or bi-directional"
Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition! 3.41! Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009!
 Indirect Communication

■ A mailbox may be owned either by a process (part of

its address space) or by the OS."
■ When a process that owns a mailbox terminates, the
mailbox disappears."
■ OS allows the process the 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! 3.42! Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009!
 Indirect Communication

■ Mailbox sharing"
● P1, P2, and P3 share mailbox A."
● P1, sends a message to A; P2 and P3 receive from A."
● 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 (P2
or P3 not both) Sender is notified who the receiver
was."
Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition! 3.43! 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 by the receiving process
or by the mailbox."
● Blocking receive has the receiver block until a
message is available "

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition! 3.44! Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009!
 Synchronization

■ Message passing may be either blocking or non-

blocking"
■ Non-blocking is considered asynchronous!
● Non-blocking send has the sender send the
message and continue operation."
● Non-blocking receive has the receiver receive
either a valid message or null"
■ When Both send() and receive() are blocking, we
have a rendezvous between the sender and the
receiver."

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition! 3.45! Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009!
 Buffering

■ Messages exchanged by processes reside in a

temporary queue."
■ Queue of messages attached to the link;
implemented in one of three ways"
1."Zero capacity – max length of 0 messages
( cannot have any messages waiting in it).
Sender must wait(blocked) for receiver
(rendezvous)"
2."Bounded capacity – finite length of n messages
Sender must wait (block) if link is full"
3."Unbounded capacity – infinite length
Sender never waits."

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition! 3.46! Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009!
 End of Chapter 3

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