Module 11: I/O Systems

Reading: Chapter 13

Objectives
 Explore the structure of the operating system’s
I/O subsystem.
 Discuss the principles of I/O hardware and its
complexity.
 Provide details on the performance aspects of
the I/O hardware and software.
 Controller
I/O Port
Systems
Bus

Introduction

I/O Hardware
I/O Techniques

Kernel I/O Application I/O

Subsystem Interface
Types of I/O Devices

 For human usage

 printers
 monitors
 keyboard…
 For the machine
 disks, tapes…
 For communication
 modems, network cards...
Main Characteristics
 Speed (data rate)
 enormous differences
 Unit of data transfer
 Byte stream (ex: keyboard)
 Blocks (ex: disk)
 Data representation
 Different data encoding schemes adopted (character
codes, parity conventions...)
 Error conditions
 Nature of errors and responses vary a lot
 Still, we want to have as simple and unified view of them as
possible
I/O Hardware
 I/O Port
 Connection point for communicating with device
 Bus
 wires + protocol
 Shared connection point
 Controller
 Electronics controlling port/bus/device
 Has control registers
• i.e. data-in, data-out, status, control
 + other stuff (buffers, …)
 Devices have addresses
 Direct I/O instructions
 Memory-mapped I/O
A Typical PC Bus Structure

PCI: Peripheral Component Interconnect

 Communication between CPU and I/O
Controllers
 Two basic techniques:
 CPU accesses controller registers.
 CPU and controllers can exchange data via zones in
main memory
 Combination of both techniques

Contr. CPU
Periph.

RAM
Device I/O Port Locations on PCs (partial)
 Controller
I/O Port
DMA

Systems Interrupts
Bus

Introduction Polling

I/O Hardware
I/O Techniques

Kernel I/O Application I/O

Subsystem Interface
I/O using Polling
 CPU reads/writes the I/O Port/Controller registers
 Handshaking between the CPU and the controller
 Ready bit in a register indicates if the controller is
busy (=1) ore can accept a new command (=0).
 Busy-waiting/polling necessary when ready bit
indicates device is busy
 Low overhead if ready bit becomes 0 soon
 But lots of waste (busy waiting) if the ready bit
remains at 1 for a long time
 Solution?
 interrupts
Interrupts
Idea: don’t poll the device, but let the device tell the CPU when
it is ready

How the device signals to the CPU?

 Interrupt-request line triggered by I/O device

How does the CPU know which device was involved?

 Can poll all devices
 From the interrupt #
 Index to the Interrupt Vector table, pointing to Interrupt
Handlers
Interrupt-Driven I/O Cycle
Intel Pentium Processor Event-Vector
Table
Interrupts
Interrupt attributes
 Maskable/non-maskable
 Interrupt priorities

Interrupt uses
 Interrupt-based I/O
 Handling exceptions
 Invoking OS kernel (system calls)
 Managing flow of control
Direct Memory Access (DMA)
 In systems with no DMA, the CPU is involved in the
transfer of each byte.
Contr UCT Mém

 DMA is used to exclude the involvement of the CPU,

particularly for large I/O.
 Requires a special controller
 The controller accesses memory directly
 DMA still slows the CPU, since it uses the bus to the
memory which prevents the CPU from using it
 But much less than having the CPU more involved in
the I/O.
UCT
Contr. DMA Mém
c
Direct Memory Access – 6 Steps
 Controller
I/O Port
DMA

Systems Interrupts
Bus

Introduction Polling

I/O Hardware
I/O Techniques

Kernel I/O Application I/O

Subsystem Interface Device
Characteristics
Device
Catagories
Block
Devices Character Blocking and
Network Devices Non-Blocking
Devices Clocks and I/O
Timers
Application I/O Interface
 the OS must perform the I/O on behalf of the user processes
 ideally, all I/O devices would be accessed in a uniform way
 OS hides hardware differences behind a uniform API
 in reality, the I/O devices are way too different
 block or stream oriented
 only read, only write, read/write
 sequential/random access
 synchronous/asynchronous
 vastly different transfer rates
 sharable/dedicated
Characteristics of I/O Devices
Application I/O Interface
 Modular, hierarchical, multi-layered model is generally used
 The I/O system encapsulates the behaviour of peripherals into major
device categories:
 Block I/O or Character-stream I/O
 Memory-mapped file
 Network sockets
 Additional standard devices
 Clock, timer
 The driver layer masks the differences between the various
peripherals
 Backdoor function for sending arbitrary commands to controllers
 If the device is very specialized and none of the methods from the
interface fit well
 To fully exploit the device’s additional functionality
 Unix - ioctl(fd, command, args)
 The developer of drivers must create a driver for each type of
operating system
A Kernel I/O Structure
Block and Character Devices
 Block devices include disk drives
 Commands include read, write, seek
 Managed by file-system
 Raw I/O can be used (i.e. databases)
 Compromise: direct I/O
• FS, but not buffering/locking
 Memory-mapped file access possible

 Character devices include keyboards, mice, serial

ports
 Commands include get, put
 Libraries layered on top to allow line editing
Network Devices
 Varying enough from block and character to
have own interface

 Unix and Windows NT/9x/2000 include socket

interface
 Separates network protocol from network
operation
 Includes select functionality

 Approaches vary widely (pipes, FIFOs, streams,

queues, mailboxes)
Clocks and Timers

 Provide current time, elapsed time, timer

 Programmable interval timer used for timings,

periodic interrupts

 ioctl (on UNIX) covers odd aspects of I/O such

as clocks and timers

 Other calls such as sleep(), alarm(),

getitimer(), and setitimer() provide timing
services
Blocking and Nonblocking I/O
 Blocking - process suspended until I/O completed
 Easy to use and understand
 Insufficient for some needs

 Nonblocking - I/O call returns as much as available

 User interface, data copy (buffered I/O)
 Returns quickly with count of bytes read or written
 Can be implemented using multithreading and
blocking I/O

 Asynchronous - process runs while I/O executes

 Difficult to use
 I/O subsystem signals process when I/O completed
Two I/O Methods

Synchronous Asynchronous
 Controller
I/O Port
DMA

Systems Interrupts
Bus

Introduction Polling

I/O Hardware
I/O Techniques

Kernel I/O Application I/O

Subsystem Interface Device
Characteristics
I/O Scheduling
Device
Catagories
Buffering/Caching/Spooling Block
Devices Character Blocking and
Error Handing/Protection Devices Non-Blocking
Network
Devices Clocks and I/O
Kernel Data Structures
Timers
I/O Management Objectives
Efficiency
 I/O operations are much slower than processor operations
 quite often I/O is the bottleneck
 any inefficiency in I/O directly impacts the whole system
performance
 what can be done?
 use DMA or interrupt driven I/O
 schedule the processes so that the I/O devices are fully utilized
 rearrange I/O requests to allow more efficient use of the I/O
device
• disk scheduling
 Use buffering & caching
Error handling
Protection of the I/O devices
Kernel I/O Subsystem
 I/O Scheduling
 I/O request ordering via per-device queue
 Example: disc scheduling
 Goals: efficiency, fairness, priorities

 Buffering - store data in memory while

transferring between devices
 Double buffering
 To cope with device speed mismatch
 To cope with device transfer size mismatch
 To maintain “copy semantics”
Kernel I/O Subsystem
 Caching - fast memory holding copy of data
 Always just a copy
 Key to performance

 Spooling - hold output for a device

 If device can serve only one request at a time
 i.e., Printing

 Device reservation - provides exclusive access to a

device
 System calls for allocation and deallocation
 Watch out for deadlock
Kernel I/O Subsystem Summary
 Name space management – which device is this file on?
 Access control – who can access this file/device?
 Operations control - which operations are possible on this
device
 File-System space allocation
 Device allocation
 Buffering, caching, spooling
 I/O scheduling
 Device-status monitoring, error handling and failure recovery
 Device driver configuration and initialization

Device drivers provide a uniform interface for accessing devices to

the upper layers
Example: I/O Request Life Cycle
 Controller
I/O Port
DMA

Systems Interrupts
Bus

Introduction Polling

I/O Hardware
I/O Techniques

Kernel I/O Application I/O

Subsystem Interface Device
Characteristics
I/O Scheduling
Device
Catagories
Buffering/Caching/Spooling Block
Devices Character Blocking and
Error Handing/Protection Devices Non-Blocking
Network
Devices Clocks and I/O
Kernel Data Structures
Timers