Processes

What is a process?
Structure of a process
Process state
Schedulers and Scheduling Queues
Context switching
Process creation and termination
Inter Process Communication
Dr. Manmath Narayan Sahoo
Department of Computer Science & Engineering
National Institute of Technology Rourkela
Odisha – 769008

Disclaimer – This slide is prepared taking content from various books and online resources. The presenter
doesn’t own the content. The inherited content is used for educational purpose only.
Process
• Process is a program that has initiated its execution.
• 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

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Process structure
A process includes:

• Current activity including program counter, processor registers ⇒system

• text/code/program section containing a copy of the machine code instructions

data section storing process context and info about

resources allocated
• Stack containing temporary data
– Function parameters, return addresses, local variables
• Data section containing global variables
• Heap containing memory dynamically allocated during run time

user and system data sections obviously may be different from one run of a process to another

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Process in memory

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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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Process Control Block (PCB)
• PCB - data structure that contains Information associated with each
process:
– Process ID
– Process State
– Program Counter
– Register Contents
– Starting address of the process
– Size of the process
– Pointer to Child Process
– Pointer to Next PCB (Sibling Pointer)
– Resource Pointer
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Process Scheduling Queues
• Job queue – Set of all processes just created (new state
processes).
• Ready queue – set of all processes that are in main memory,
ready to execute (ready state processes).
• Device queues – set of processes waiting to use an I/O device
(waiting state processes).

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Ready Queue And Various I/O Device Queues

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Queueing Diagram

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Schedulers
• Long-term scheduler (LTS) (or job scheduler) → selects

• Short-term scheduler (STS) (or CPU scheduler) → selects

which processes should be brought into the ready queue.

which process should be executed next on CPU.

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Schedulers
• 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
• Long-term scheduler strives for good process mix of I/O-bound and CPU-bound
processes
– I/O-bound process →spends more time doing I/O than computations
– CPU-bound process → spends more time doing computations
– Only I/O bound processes → low CPU utilization
– Only CPU-bound processes → low device utilization

Dr. Manmath N. Sahoo (CS) 11

Schedulers
• Some OS have a light LTS; and a Medium Term Scheduler (MTS).
• If degree of multiprogramming becomes high then total context switch
overhead will be more.
• MTS can temporarily swap some processes out to disk and bring them
back later.

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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.
• Context of a process represented in the PCB
• Context-switch time is overhead; the system does no useful
work while switching.

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CPU switched between processes

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Process Creation
• Parent process create children processes, which, in turn create other

• There must be a first process (init process) → this is a system

processes, forming a tree of processes

process created during booting

• 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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A Tree of Processes in Linux

Dr. Manmath N. Sahoo (CS) 16

Process Termination
• Process executes last statement and asks the operating system
to delete it using exit().
– Return data from child to parent.
– Process’ resources are deallocated by OS.
• Parent may terminate execution of children processes (abort).
Reasons for this could be:
– Task assigned to child is no longer required.
– Parent is exiting and O/S does not allow children to continue if
their parent terminates – cascaded termination.

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Cooperating Processes
• Processes within a system may be independent or cooperating
• Cooperating process can legally affect or be affected by the execution of another process.

Reasons for cooperating processes:

• Processes may need to share data
– More than one process reading/writing the same data (a shared file, a database record,…)
– Output of one process being used by another
• Ordering executions of multiple processes may be needed to ensure correctness
– Process X should not do something before process Y does something etc.
– Need mechanisms to pass control signals between processes
• Modularity → dividing system functions into separate processes that then communicate
• Computation speed-up → but only if >1 processor
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Inter-Process Communication (IPC)
Cooperating processes need interprocess communication (IPC)
• Message passing
– P and Q exchange messages
• Shared memory
– P writes into a shared location, Q reads from it and vice-versa

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Inter-Process Communication (IPC)
(a) Message Passing (b) Shared Memory

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Message Passing System

W e b s e rv e r

S1 S2 S3 S4
o pe ra ti o n s :
H TTP S 1 : a cce pt co n n e cti o n
a pro ce s s S 2 : r e c e i ve ( r e q u e s t )
re qu e s t
S 3 : s e n d (re s po n s e )
a n o pe ra ti o n S 3 : di s co n n e ct
H TTP
C 1 : m a k e co n n e cti o n
re s po n s e
C 2 : s e n d (re qu e s t)
da ta fl o w C 3 : r e c e i ve ( r e s p o n s e )
C1 C2 C3 C4
C 4 : di s co n n e ct

W e b bro ws e r

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Message Passing System
• Direct vs. Indirect
• Symmetric vs. Asymmetric
• Synchronous vs. Asynchronous

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Message Passing System: Direct
Primitives:
• Connect (sender_addr, receiver_addr)
– for connection-oriented communication.
• Send ([receiver],message)
– e.g., Send(P, msg)
• Receive ([sender],buffer)
– e.g., Receive(Q,buf)
• Disconnect(connectionid)
– for connection-oriented communication.

Dr. Manmath N. Sahoo (CS) 23

Message Passing System: Direct
• Symmetric – Both the sender and receiver have to explicitly
name each other.
• Asymmetric – Only the sender has to name the receiver, but
the receiver doesn’t need to name the sender.

– Send(P, msg); → send message to P.

– Facilitates many-to-one communication.

– Receive(id, mbuf); → receive message from any process. “id”

will be set to the name of the process with which communication
has taken place.

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Message Passing System: Indirect
• The messages are sent and received to/from mailboxes (also referred
to as ports).
– Each mailbox has a unique identifier.
– Processes can communicate only if they share a mailbox
• Operations
– create a new mailbox (port)
– send and receive messages through mailbox
– destroy a mailbox
• Primitives are defined as:
send(A, message) – send a message to mailbox A
receive(A, mbuffer) – receive a message from mailbox A
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Message Passing System: Indirect
• Mailbox sharing
– P1, P2, and P3 share mailbox A
– P1 sends; P2 and P3 receive
– 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. Sender is
notified who the receiver was.

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Message Passing System: Synchronous vs. Asynchronous
• Message passing may be either blocking or non-blocking
•
– Blocking send →the sender is blocked until the message is received
Blocking is considered synchronous

– Blocking receive →the receiver is blocked until a message is

available
•
– Non-blocking send →the sender sends the message and continue
Non-blocking is considered asynchronous

– Non-blocking receive →the receiver receives:

• A valid message, or
• Null message
• Different combinations possible
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Synchronous send and receive
pr o c e s s 1 pr o c e s s 2
r unni ng o n ho s t 1 r unni ng o n ho s t 2

b lo c k in g rec eiv e s tarts

b lo c k in g s en d s tarts an o p eratio n

ex ec u tio n flo w
ac k n o w led g em en t o f d ata rec eiv ed s u s p en d ed p erio d
b lo c k in g s en d retu rn s p ro v id ed b y th e IP C fac ility b lo c k in g rec eiv e en d s

Sync hr o no us Se nd and R e c e i ve

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Asynchronous send and synchronous receive
P ro cess 2
P ro cess 1

b lo c k in g r ec eiv e s tar ts

n o n b lo c k in g s en d

o p er atio n
ex ec u tio n f lo w
s u s p en d ed p er io d
b lo c k in g r ec eiv e r etu r n s

As ync hr o no us Se nd and
Sync hr o no us R e c e i ve

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Synchronous send and Asynchronous Receive - A
P rocess 2
P rocess 1

b lo c k in g s e n d is s u e d

n o n b lo c k in g r e c e iv e is s u e d
tr a n s p a r e n t a c k n o w le d g e m e n t
p r o v id e d b y th e I P C f a c ility e x e c u tio n f lo w
s u s p e n d e d p e r io d

S yn c h r o n o u s S e n d an d
As yn c h r o n o u s R e c e i ve
S c e n a r io A

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Synchronous send and Asynchronous Receive - B
P ro cess 2
P ro cess 1

n o n b lo c k in g r e c e iv e is s u e d
a n d r e tu r n e d im m e d ia te ly
b lo c k in g s e n d is s u e d

in d e f in ite
b lo c k in g e x e c u tio n f lo w
s u s p e n d e d p e r io d

P ro cess 2
P ro cess 1 S yn c h r o n o u s S e n d an d
As yn c h r o n o u s R e c e i ve
S c e n a r io B

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Synchronous send and Asynchronous Receive - C
P rocess 2
P rocess 1

n o n b lo c k in g r e c e iv e is s u e d
a n d r e tu r n e d im m e d ia te ly
b lo c k in g s e n d is s u e d
p r o c e s s is n o tif ie d
tr a n s p a r e n t a c k n o w le d g e m e n t o f th e a r r iv a l o f
p r o v id e d b y th e I P C f a c ility d a ta
e x e c u tio n f lo w
s u s p e n d e d p e r io d

S yn c h r o n o u s S e n d an d
As yn c h r o n o u s R e c e i ve
S c e n a r io C

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Asynchronous send and Asynchronous receive - A

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Asynchronous send and Asynchronous receive - B

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Event diagram
Pro ce s s B
Pro ce s s A

t im e
r eq u es t 1

r es p o n s e 1

r eq u es t 2
in ter p r o c es s c o m m u n ic atio n
ex ec u tio n f lo w
r es p o n s e2
p r o c es s b lo c k ed

E ve nt di ag r am fo r a pr o to c o l

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Blocking, deadlock, and timeouts
• Blocking operations issued in the wrong sequence can cause deadlocks.
• Deadlocks should be avoided: timeout

P r o c es s 1 P r o c es s 2

r ec eiv e f r o m p r o c es s 2 is s u ed
p r o c es s 1 b lo c k ed p en d in g d ata
f r o m p r o c es s 2 .
r ec eiv ed f r o m p r o c es s 1 is s u ed
p r o c es s 2 b lo c k ed p en d in g d ata
f r o m p r o c es s 1 .

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Using threads for asynchronous IPC
• Suppose IPC supports only blocking send and receive
• But user wants asynchronous operation. How???
– use a child process or thread pro ce s s

m ain th r ead

n ew th r ead is s u es a b lo c k in g I P C o p er atio n

th r ead is b lo c k ed
m ain th r ead c o n tin u es w ith
o th er p r o c es s in g
th r ead is u n b lo c k ed af ter th e o p er atio n is f u lf illed

Dr. Manmath N. Sahoo (CS) 37

Buffering during message passing
• Queue of messages attached to the link.
• Implemented in one of three ways
– Zero capacity
• No messages are queued on a link
• Sender must wait for receiver, after generating one item
– Bounded capacity
• Finite length of n messages
• Sender must wait if link full
– Unbounded capacity
• Infinite length
• Sender never waits
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Process: Exception Conditions
• Process Termination
– Sender Terminates: If the receiver has initiated a blocking receive then the OS either
terminates the receiver or notifies it that Sender has terminated
– Receiver Terminates: If the sender has initiated a blocking send then the OS either
terminates the Sender or notifies it that Receiver has terminated
• Lost Messages
– The OS is responsible for detecting this event and for resending the message
– The Sender is responsible for detecting this event and for resending it
– The OS detects the event and notifies the Sender about it
• Scrambled Messages
– Due to noise in the channel
– Handled in the similar ways as lost messages
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