Chapter 3: Processes

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne

 Chapter 3: Processes
 Process Concept
 Process Scheduling
 Operations on Processes
 Interprocess Communication

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.2 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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

 To explore interprocess communication using

shared memory and mes- sage passing

 To describe communication in client-server

systems

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.3 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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
 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

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.4 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Process in Memory

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.5 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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 – 9th Edition 3.6 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Diagram of Process State

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.7 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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,
Operating System time
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 CPU Switch From Process to Process

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.9 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Process Representation in Linux
 Represented by the C structure task_struct
pid t_pid; /* process identifier */
long state; /* state of the process */
unsigned int time_slice /* scheduling information */
struct task_struct *parent; /* this process’s parent */
struct list_head children; /* this process’s children */

struct files_struct *files; /* list of open files */

struct mm_struct *mm; /* address space of this process
*/

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.10 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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 – 9th Edition 3.11 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Representation of Process Scheduling
 Queueing diagram represents queues, resources,
flows

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.12 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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;
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3.13 long CPU bursts Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.14 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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 – 9th Edition 3.15 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Operations on Processes
 System must provide mechanisms for process creation,
termination, and so on as detailed next

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.16 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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 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

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.17 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 A Tree of Processes in Linux

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.18 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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 – 9th Edition 3.19 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 C Program Forking Separate Process

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.20 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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
 Wait for termination, returning the pid:
 If no parent waiting, then terminated process is a zombie
 If parent terminated, processes are orphans

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.21 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Multiprocess Architecture – Chrome
Browser

 Many web browsers ran as single process (some still

do)
 If one web site causes trouble, entire browser can
hang or crash
 Google Chrome Browser is multiprocess with 3
categories
 Browser process manages user interface, disk and
network I/O
 Renderer process renders web pages, deals with
HTML, Javascript, new one for each website opened
 Runs in sandbox restricting disk and network I/O,
minimizing effect of security exploits
 Plug-in process for each type of plug-in

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.22 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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 – 9th Edition 3.23 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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 – 9th Edition 3.24 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Communications Models

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.25 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne