Lecture 05

Chapter 3: Processes
Concepts

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Outline

 Process Concept
 Process States
 Process Scheduling
 A seven State Model
 Queuing Diagram for Scheduling
 Operations on Processes

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.2 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 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

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.3 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 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

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.4 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 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

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.5 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Process in Memory

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.6 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Process State & Diagram
 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 3.7 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 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

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.8 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 CPU Switch From Process to Process

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.9 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 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 3.10 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Ready Queue And Various I/O Device Queues

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.11 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Representation of Process Scheduling

 Queueing diagram represents queues, resources, flows

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.12 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 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

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.13 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 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 ©2013
 Suspended Processes

 Processor is much faster than I/O so many processes

could be waiting for I/O

 Swap some of these processes to disk to free up more

memory

 Blocked state becomes blocked-suspended state when

swapped to disk
 Two new states
o Blocked-suspended
o Ready-suspended

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.15 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Process State Transition Diagram with Two
Suspend States

New

Admit Suspend
Admit

Activate Dispatch
Ready, Ready Running Exit
suspend
Suspend Time out

Event Event
Event
Occurs Wait
Occurs

Activate
Blocked, Blocked
suspend
Suspend
Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.16 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Reason for Process Suspension
Reason Comment
Swapping The OS needs to release sufficient main memory to
bring in a process that is ready to execute.
Other OS Reason OS suspects process of causing a problem.
Interactive User e.g. debugging or in connection with the use of a
Request resource.

Timing A process may be executed periodically (e.g., an

accounting or system monitoring process) and may
be suspended while waiting for the next time.
Parent Process A parent process may wish to suspend execution of
Request a descendent to examine or modify the suspended
process, or to coordinate the activity of various
descendants.

Reasons for Process Suspension

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.17 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 A Seven-State Model
Two suspend states allow all processes which are not actually running to
be swapped.
Run through the four states:
• Ready: The process is in main memory and available for execution.
• Blocked: The process is in main memory and awaiting an event.
• Blocked/Suspend: The process is in secondary memory and awaiting
an event.
• Ready/Suspend: The process is in secondary memory but is
available for execution as soon as it is loaded into main memory.

It would be useful to also summarise the main transitions (abridged)

Blocked  Blocked/Suspend: If there are no ready processes, then
at least one blocked process is swapped out to make room for another
process that is not blocked. This transition can be made even if there
are ready processes available, if the OS determines that the currently
running process or a ready process that it would like to dispatch
requires more main memory to maintain adequate performance.

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.18 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 A Seven-State Model
Blocked/Suspend  Ready/Suspend: A process in the
Blocked/Suspend state is moved to the Ready/Suspend state when the
event for which it has been waiting occurs.

Ready/Suspend  Ready: When there are no ready processes in

main memory, or if a suspended process has a higher priority, the OS
will need to bring one in to continue execution.

Ready  Ready/Suspend: Normally, the OS would prefer to

suspend a blocked process rather than a ready one, because the ready
process can now be executed, whereas the blocked process is taking
up main memory space and cannot be executed. However, it may be
necessary to suspend a ready process if that is the only way to free up
a sufficiently large block of main memory.

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.19 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Queuing Diagram for Scheduling

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.20 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Multitasking in Mobile Systems
 Some mobile systems (e.g., early version of iOS) allow only one
process to run, others suspended
 Due to screen real estate, user interface limits iOS provides for a
 Single foreground process- controlled via user interface
 Multiple background processes– in memory, running, but not
on the display, and with limits
 Limits include single, short task, receiving notification of events,
specific long-running tasks like audio playback
 Android runs foreground and background, with fewer limits
 Background process uses a service to perform tasks
 Service can keep running even if background process is
suspended
 Service has no user interface, small memory use

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.21 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 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

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.22 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Operations on Processes: 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 3.23 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Operations on Processes: 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 3.24 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Operations on Processes: Process Termination

 Process executes last statement and then asks the operating

system to delete it using the exit() system call.
 Returns status data from child to parent (via wait())
 Process’ resources are deallocated by operating system
 Parent may terminate the execution of children processes
using the abort() system call. Some reasons for doing so:
 Child has exceeded allocated resources
 Task assigned to child is no longer required
 The parent is exiting and the operating systems does not
allow a child to continue if its parent terminates

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.25 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013