Process Concept 3

 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
 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
Process in Memory
 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
Diagram of Process State
 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
 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
 Representation of Process Scheduling

 Queueing diagram represents queues, resources, flows

 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
 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
 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
 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
 Communications Models
(a) Message passing. (b) shared memory.
 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
 Buffering

 Queue of messages attached to the link.

 implemented in one of three ways
1. Zero capacity – no messages are queued on a link.
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
 Threads Benefits

 Responsiveness – may allow continued execution if part of

process is blocked, especially important for user interfaces
 Resource Sharing – threads share resources of process, easier
than shared memory or message passing
 Economy – cheaper than process creation, thread switching
lower overhead than context switching
 Scalability – process can take advantage of multiprocessor
architectures
 Multicore Programming

 Multicore or multiprocessor systems putting pressure on

programmers, challenges include:
 Dividing activities
 Balance
 Data splitting
 Data dependency
 Testing and debugging
 Parallelism implies a system can perform more than one task
simultaneously
 Concurrency supports more than one task making progress
 Single processor / core, scheduler providing concurrency
 Multicore Programming (Cont.)

 Types of parallelism
 Data parallelism – distributes subsets of the same data
across multiple cores, same operation on each
 Task parallelism – distributing threads across cores, each
thread performing unique operation
 As # of threads grows, so does architectural support for threading
 CPUs have cores as well as hardware threads
 Consider Oracle SPARC T4 with 8 cores, and 8 hardware
threads per core
 Concurrency vs. Parallelism
 Concurrent execution on single-core system:

 Parallelism on a multi-core system:

Single and Multithreaded Processes
 User Threads and Kernel Threads

 User threads - management done by user-level threads library

 Three primary thread libraries:
 POSIX Pthreads
 Windows threads
 Java threads
 Kernel threads - Supported by the Kernel
 Multithreading Models

 Many-to-One

 One-to-One

 Many-to-Many
 Many-to-One

 Many user-level threads mapped to

single kernel thread
 One thread blocking causes all to block
 Multiple threads may not run in parallel
on muticore system because only one
may be in kernel at a time
 Few systems currently use this model
 Examples:
 Solaris Green Threads
 GNU Portable Threads
 One-to-One
 Each user-level thread maps to kernel thread
 Creating a user-level thread creates a kernel thread
 More concurrency than many-to-one
 Number of threads per process sometimes
restricted due to overhead
 Examples
 Windows
 Linux
 Solaris 9 and later
 Many-to-Many Model
 Allows many user level threads to be
mapped to many kernel threads
 Allows the operating system to create
a sufficient number of kernel threads
 Solaris prior to version 9
 Windows with the ThreadFiber
package
 Two-level Model
 Similar to M:M, except that it allows a user thread to be
bound to kernel thread
 Examples
 IRIX
 HP-UX
 Tru64 UNIX
 Solaris 8 and earlier
 Basic Concepts

 Maximum CPU utilization

obtained with multiprogramming
 CPU–I/O Burst Cycle – Process
execution consists of a cycle of
CPU execution and I/O wait
 CPU burst followed by I/O burst
 CPU burst distribution is of main
concern
 CPU Scheduler
 Short-term scheduler selects from among the processes in
ready queue, and allocates the CPU to one of them
 Queue may be ordered in various ways
 CPU scheduling decisions may take place when a process:
1. Switches from running to waiting state
2. Switches from running to ready state
3. Switches from waiting to ready
4. Terminates
 Scheduling under 1 and 4 is nonpreemptive
 All other scheduling is preemptive
 Consider access to shared data
 Consider preemption while in kernel mode
 Consider interrupts occurring during crucial OS activities
 Scheduling Criteria

 CPU utilization – keep the CPU as busy as possible

 Throughput – # of processes that complete their execution per
time unit
 Turnaround time – amount of time to execute a particular
process
 Waiting time – amount of time a process has been waiting in the
ready queue
 Response time – amount of time it takes from when a request
was submitted until the first response is produced, not output (for
time-sharing environment)
 Scheduling Algorithm Optimization Criteria

 Max CPU utilization

 Max throughput
 Min turnaround time
 Min waiting time
 Min response time
 First- Come, First-Served (FCFS) Scheduling

Process Burst Time

P1 24
P2 3
P3 3
 Suppose that the processes arrive in the order: P1 , P2 , P3
The Gantt Chart for the schedule is:

P 1
P 2
P3
0 24 27 30

 Waiting time for P1 = 0; P2 = 24; P3 = 27

 Average waiting time: (0 + 24 + 27)/3 = 17
 FCFS Scheduling (Cont.)
Suppose that the processes arrive in the order:
P 2 , P 3 , P1
 The Gantt chart for the schedule is:

P 2
P 3
P 1

0 3 6 30

 Waiting time for P1 = 6; P2 = 0; P3 = 3

 Average waiting time: (6 + 0 + 3)/3 = 3
 Much better than previous case
 Convoy effect - short process behind long process
 Consider one CPU-bound and many I/O-bound processes
 Shortest-Job-First (SJF) Scheduling

 Associate with each process the length of its next CPU burst
 Use these lengths to schedule the process with the shortest
time
 SJF is optimal – gives minimum average waiting time for a given
set of processes
 The difficulty is knowing the length of the next CPU request
 Could ask the user
 Example of SJF

ProcessArrival Time Burst Time

P1 0.0 6
P2 2.0 8
P3 4.0 7
P4 5.0 3

 SJF scheduling chart

P 4
P 1
P3 P2
0 3 9 16 24

 Average waiting time = (3 + 16 + 9 + 0) / 4 = 7

 Example of Shortest-remaining-time-first

 Now we add the concepts of varying arrival times and preemption to

the analysis
ProcessA arri Arrival TimeT Burst Time
P1 0 8
P2 1 4
P3 2 9
P4 3 5
 Preemptive SJF Gantt Chart

P 1
P 2
P4 P1 P3
0 1 5 10 17 26

 Average waiting time = [(10-1)+(1-1)+(17-2)+5-3)]/4 = 26/4 = 6.5 msec

 Priority Scheduling

 A priority number (integer) is associated with each process

 The CPU is allocated to the process with the highest priority

(smallest integer  highest priority)
 Preemptive
 Nonpreemptive

 SJF is priority scheduling where priority is the inverse of predicted

next CPU burst time

 Problem  Starvation – low priority processes may never execute

 Solution  Aging – as time progresses increase the priority of the

process
 Example of Priority Scheduling

ProcessA arri Burst TimeT Priority

P1 10 3
P2 1 1
P3 2 4
P4 1 5
P5 5 2

 Priority scheduling Gantt Chart

P 1
P 2
P1 P3 P4
0 1 6 16 18 19

 Average waiting time = 8.2 msec

 Round Robin (RR)

 Each process gets a small unit of CPU time (time quantum q),
usually 10-100 milliseconds. After this time has elapsed, the
process is preempted and added to the end of the ready queue.
 If there are n processes in the ready queue and the time quantum
is q, then each process gets 1/n of the CPU time in chunks of at
most q time units at once. No process waits more than (n-1)q
time units.
 Timer interrupts every quantum to schedule next process
 Performance
 q large  FIFO
 q small  q must be large with respect to context switch,
otherwise overhead is too high
 Example of RR with Time Quantum = 4
Process Burst Time
P1 24
P2 3
P3 3
 The Gantt chart is:

P 1
P 2
P 3
P 1
P 1
P 1
P 1
P1
0 4 7 10 14 18 22 26 30

 Typically, higher average turnaround than SJF, but better response

 q should be large compared to context switch time
 q usually 10ms to 100ms, context switch < 10 usec
Multilevel Queue Scheduling
 Multilevel Feedback Queue

 A process can move between the various queues; aging can be

implemented this way
 Multilevel-feedback-queue scheduler defined by the following
parameters:
 number of queues
 scheduling algorithms for each queue
 method used to determine when to upgrade a process
 method used to determine when to demote a process
 method used to determine which queue a process will enter
when that process needs service
 Example of Multilevel Feedback Queue

 Three queues:
 Q0 – RR with time quantum 8 milliseconds
 Q1 – RR time quantum 16 milliseconds
 Q2 – FCFS

 Scheduling
 A new job enters queue Q0 which is
served FCFS
 When it gains CPU, job receives 8
milliseconds
 If it does not finish in 8 milliseconds,
job is moved to queue Q1
 At Q1 job is again served FCFS and
receives 16 additional milliseconds
 If it still does not complete, it is
preempted and moved to queue Q2
 Real-Time CPU Scheduling
 Can present obvious challenges
 Soft real-time systems – no
guarantee as to when critical real-
time process will be scheduled
 Hard real-time systems – task
must be serviced by its deadline
 Two types of latencies affect
performance
1. Interrupt latency – time from arrival of
interrupt to start of routine that
services interrupt
2. Dispatch latency – time for schedule
to take current process off CPU and
switch to another
 Real-Time CPU Scheduling (Cont.)

 Conflict phase of
dispatch latency:
1. Preemption of
any process
running in kernel
mode
2. Release by low-
priority process
of resources
needed by high-
priority
processes