Chapter 3: Processes

Shatabdi Roy Moon

Lecturer, Dept. of CSE
 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
 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

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 Program to Process

Process page table, PCB, device

PROGRAM driver, memory mapped H/W deices
kernel code etc.
Hard Disk
Mode
bit =0
RAM KERNEL
.cpp 2GB
Kernel
Space
Compile STACK
Systemcall

P1
.obj, .asm 2GB
User HEAP
Space
Mode
Linker DATA
bit =1
OS Kernel CODE/TEXT
IVT
.exe
./hello.exe

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 Process in Memory

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 Two State Process Model

Process may be in one of two states

Running
Not-running

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 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

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 Diagram of Process State

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 Process Control Block (PCB)
Information associated with each process
(also called task control block)
Process ID – unique number assigned for a process
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

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 Process Control Block (PCB)

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 CPU Switch From Process to Process

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 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

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 (Queueing-Diagram)
Representation of Process Scheduling

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 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
 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
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 Mid-term scheduler
 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

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 Process Creation
 Parent process creates 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

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 Process Creation
 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

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 Processes Tree on a UNIX System

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 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
 If no parent waiting, then terminated process is a zombie
 If parent terminated, processes are orphans

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End of Chapter 3