Think OS: A Brief Introduction to

Operating Systems

Version 0.3
 Think OS
A Brief Introduction to Operating Systems

Version 0.3

Allen B. Downey

Green Tea Press

Needham, Massachusetts
Copyright © 2014 Allen B. Downey.

Green Tea Press

9 Washburn Ave
Needham MA 02492
Permission is granted to copy, distribute, and/or modify this document under
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The original form of this book is LATEX source code. Compiling this code has the
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Preface

In many computer science programs, Operating Systems is an advanced

topic. By the time students take it, they usually know how to program in
C, and they have probably taken a class in Computer Architecture. Usually
the goal of the class is to expose students to the design and implementation
of operating systems, with the implied assumption that some of them will
do research in this area, or write part of an OS.

This book is intended for a different audience, and it has different goals. I
developed it for a class at Olin College called Software Systems.

Most students taking this class learned to program in Python, so one of

the goals is to help them learn C. For that part of the class, I use Griffiths
and Griffiths, Head First C, from O’Reilly Media. This book is meant to
complement that one.

Few of my students will ever write an operating system, but many of them
will write low-level applications in C, and some of them will work on em-
bedded systems. My class includes material from operating systems, net-
works, databases, and embedded systems, but it emphasizes the topics pro-
grammers need to know.

This book does not assume that you have studied Computer Architecture.
As we go along, I will explain what we need.

If this book is successful, it should give you a better understanding of what

is happening when programs run, and what you can do to make them run
better and faster.

Chapter 1 explains some of the differences between compiled and inter-

preted languages, with some insight into how compilers work. Recom-
mended reading: Head First C Chapter 1.

Chapter 2 explains how the operating system uses processes to protect run-
ning programs from interfering with each other.
vi Chapter 0. Preface

Chapter 3 explains virtual memory and address translation. Recommended

reading: Head First C Chapter 2.
Chapter 4 is about file systems and data streams. Recommended reading:
Head First C Chapter 3.
Chapter 5 describes how numbers, letters, and other values are encoded,
and presents the bitwise operators.
Chapter 6 explains how to use dynamic memory management, and how it
works. Recommended reading: Head First C Chapter 6.
Chapter 7 is about caching and the memory hierarchy.
Chapter 8 is about multitasking and scheduling.
Chapter 9 will be about threads.
Chapter 10 will be about synchronization with POSIX mutexes and condi-
tion variables.

A note on this draft

The current version of this book is an early draft. While I am working on the
text, I have not yet included the figures. So there are a few places where, I’m
sure, the explanation will be greatly improved when the figures are ready.

Where to get the code

The source material for this book and the supporting code are in a Git repos-
itory at .

Contributor List
If you have a suggestion or correction, please send email to
[email protected]. If I make a change based on your feed-
back, I will add you to the contributor list (unless you ask to be omitted).

If you include at least part of the sentence the error appears in, that makes it
easy for me to search. Page and section numbers are fine, too, but not quite
as easy to work with. Thanks!
 vii

• I am grateful to the student in Software Systems at Olin College, who tested

an early draft of this book in Spring 2014. They corrected many errors and
made many helpful suggestions. I appreciate their pioneering spirit!
viii Chapter 0. Preface
Contents

Preface v

1 Compilation 1
1.1 Compiled and interpreted languages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.2 Static types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.3 The compilation process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.4 Object code . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.5 Assembly code . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1.6 Preprocessing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1.7 Understanding errors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

2 Processes 9
2.1 Abstraction and virtualization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
2.2 Isolation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
2.3 Unix processes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

3 Virtual memory 15
3.1 A bit of information theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
3.2 Memory and storage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
3.3 Address spaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
3.4 Memory segments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
3.5 Address translation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
x Contents

4 Files and file systems 23

4.1 Disk performance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

4.2 Disk metadata . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

4.3 Block allocation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

4.4 Everything is a file? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

5 More bits and bytes 31

5.1 Representing integers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

5.2 Bitwise operators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

5.3 Representing floating-point numbers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

5.4 Unions and memory errors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

5.5 Representing strings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

6 Memory management 39

6.1 Memory errors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39

6.2 Memory leaks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41

6.3 Implementation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42

7 Caching 45

7.1 Cache performance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47

7.2 Locality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47

7.3 Measuring cache performance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48

7.4 Programming for cache performance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51

7.5 The memory hierarchy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52

7.6 Caching policy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53

Contents xi

8 Multitasking 55

8.1 Hardware state . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56

8.2 Context switching . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57

8.3 The process life cycle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57

8.4 Scheduling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58

8.5 Real-time scheduling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60

9 Cleaning up POSIX threads 61

9.1 Compiling Pthread code . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61

9.2 Creating threads . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62

9.3 Joining threads . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64

9.4 Semaphores . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64

10 Synchronization in C 67

10.1 Mutual exclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67

10.2 Make your own semaphores . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75

xii Contents
Chapter 1

Compilation

1.1 Compiled and interpreted languages

People often describe programming languages as either compiled, which
means that programs are translated into machine language and then ex-
ecuted by hardware, or interpreted, which means that programs are read
and executed by a software interpreter. For example, C is considered a com-
piled language and Python is considered an interpreted language. But the
distinction is not always clear-cut.

First, many languages can be either compiled or interpreted. For example,

there are C interpreters and Python compilers. Second, there are languages
like Java that use a hybrid approach, compiling programs into an interme-
diate language and then running the translated program in an interpreter.
Java uses an intermediate language called Java bytecode, which is similar
to machine language, but it is executed by a software interpreter, the Java
virtual machine (JVM).

So being compiled or interpreted is not an intrinsic characteristic of a lan-

guage; nevertheless, there are some general differences between compiled
and interpreted languages.

1.2 Static types

Compiled languages usually have static types, which means that you can
tell by looking at the program what type each variable refers to. Interpreted
languages often have dynamic types, which means you don’t always know
2 Chapter 1. Compilation

the type of a variable until the program is running. In general, “static” refers
to things that happen at compile time, and “dynamic” refers to things that
happen at run time.
For example, in Python you can write a function like this:

def foo(x, y):

return x + y

Looking at this code, you can’t tell what type x and y will refer to. At run
time, this function could be called several times with different types. Any
types that support the addition operator will work; any other types will
cause an exception or “run time error.”
In C you would write the same function like this:

int foo(int x, int y) {

return x + y;
}

The first line of the function includes “type declarations” for the parameters
and the return value. x and y are declared to be integers, which means that
we can check at compile time whether the addition operator is legal for this
type (it is). The return value is also declared to be an integer.
Because of these declarations, when this function is called elsewhere in the
program, the compiler can check whether the arguments provided have the
right type, and whether the return value is used correctly.
These checks happen before the program starts executing, so errors can be
found more quickly. More importantly, errors can be found in parts of the
program that have never run. Furthermore, these checks don’t have to hap-
pen at run time, which is one of the reasons compiled languages generally
run faster than interpreted languages.
Declaring types at compile time also saves space. In dynamic languages,
variable names are stored in memory while the program runs, and they
are often accessible by the program. For example, in Python the built-in
function locals returns a dictionary that contains variable names and their
values. Here’s an example in a Python interpreter:
>>> x = 5
>>> print locals()
{'x': 5, '__builtins__': <module '__builtin__' (built-in)>,
'__name__': '__main__', '__doc__': None, '__package__': None}
1.3. The compilation process 3

This shows that the name of the variable is stored in memory while the pro-
gram is running (along with some other values that are part of the default
run-time environment).

In compiled languages, variable names exist at compile-time but not at run

time. The compiler chooses a location for each variable and records these
locations as part of the compiled program.1 The location of a variable is
called its “address”. At run time, the value of each variable is stored at its
address, but the names of the variables are not stored at all (unless they are
added by the compiler for purposes of debugging).

1.3 The compilation process

As a programmer, you should have a mental model of what happens during
compilation. If you understand the process, it will help you interpret error
messages, debug your code, and avoid common pitfalls.

The steps of compilation are:

1. Preprocessing: C is one of several languages that include “preprocess-

ing directives” that take effect before the program is compiled. For
example, the #include directive causes the source code from another
file to be inserted at the location of the directive.

2. Parsing: During parsing, the compiler reads the source code and
builds an internal representation of the program, called an “abstract
syntax tree.” Errors detected during this step are generally syntax er-
rors.

3. Static checking: The compiler checks whether variables and values

have the right type, whether functions are called with the right num-
ber and type of arguments, etc. Errors detected during this step are
sometimes called “static semantic” errors.

4. Code generation: The compiler reads the internal representation of the

program and generates machine code or byte code.

5. Linking: If the program uses values and functions defined in a library,

the compiler has to find the appropriate library and include the re-
quired code.
1 This is a simplification; we will go into more detail later.
4 Chapter 1. Compilation

6. Optimization: At several points in the process, the compiler can trans-

form the program to generate code that runs faster or uses less space.
Most optimizations are simple changes that eliminate obvious waste,
but some compilers perform sophisticated analyses and transforma-
tions.

Normally when you run gcc, it runs all of these steps and generates an
executable file. For example, here is a minimal C program:

#include <stdio.h>
int main()
{
printf("Hello World\n");
return 0;
}

If you save this code in a file called hello.c, you can compile and run it like
this:

$ gcc hello.c
$ ./a.out

By default, gcc stores the executable code in a file called a.out (which orig-
inally stood for “assembler output”). The second line runs the executable.
The prefix ./ tells the shell to look for it in the current directory.

It is usually a good idea to use the -o flag to provide a better name for the
executable:

$ gcc hello.c -o hello

$ ./hello

1.4 Object code

The -c flag tells gcc to compile the program and generate machine code,
but not to link it or generate an executable:

$ gcc hello.c -c
1.5. Assembly code 5

The result is a file named hello.o, where the o stands for “object code,”
which is the compiled program. Object code is not executable, but it can be
linked into an executable.
The Unix command nm reads an object file and generates information about
the names it defines and uses. For example:

$ nm hello.o
0000000000000000 T main
U puts

This output indicates that hello.o defines the name main and uses a func-
tion named puts, which stands for “put string.” In this example, gcc per-
forms an optimization by replacing printf, which is a large and compli-
cated function, with puts, which is relatively simple.
In general you can control how much optimization gcc does with the -O
flag. By default, it does very little optimization, which can help with de-
bugging. The option -O1 turns on the most common and safe optimiza-
tions. Higher numbers turn on additional optimizations that require longer
compilation time.
In theory, optimization should not change the behavior of the program,
other than to speed it up. But if your program has a subtle bug, you might
find that optimization makes the bug appear or disappear. It is usually
a good idea to turn off optimization while you are developing new code.
Once the program is working and passing appropriate tests, you can turn
on optimization and confirm that the tests still pass.

1.5 Assembly code

Similar to the -c flag, the -S flag tells gcc to compile the program and gen-
erate assembly code, which is basically a human-readable form of machine
code.

$ gcc hello.c -S

The result is a file named hello.s, which might look something like this:

.file "hello.c"
.section .rodata
.LC0:
6 Chapter 1. Compilation

.string "Hello World"

.text
.globl main
.type main, @function
main:
.LFB0:
.cfi_startproc
pushq %rbp
.cfi_def_cfa_offset 16
.cfi_offset 6, -16
movq %rsp, %rbp
.cfi_def_cfa_register 6
movl $.LC0, %edi
call puts
movl $0, %eax
popq %rbp
.cfi_def_cfa 7, 8
ret
.cfi_endproc
.LFE0:
.size main, .-main
.ident "GCC: (Ubuntu/Linaro 4.7.3-1ubuntu1) 4.7.3"
.section .note.GNU-stack,"",@progbits
gcc is usually configured to generate code for the machine you are running
on, so for me it generates x86 assembly language, which runs on a wide
variety of processors from Intel, AMD, and others. If you are running on a
different architecture, you might see different code.

1.6 Preprocessing
Taking another step backward through the compilation process, you can
use the -E flag to run the preprocessor only:
$ gcc hello.c -E
The result is the output from the preprocessor. In this example, it contains
the included code from stdio.h, and all the files included from stdio.h,
and all the files included from those files, and so on. On my machine, the
total is more than 800 lines of code. Since almost every C program includes
stdio.h, those 800 lines of code get compiled a lot. If, like many C pro-
grams, you also include stdlib.h, the result is more than 1800 lines of code.
1.7. Understanding errors 7

1.7 Understanding errors

Now that we know the steps in the compilation process, it is easier to un-
derstand errors messages. For example, if there is an error in a #include
directive, you’ll get a message from the preprocessor:

hello.c:1:20: fatal error: stdioo.h: No such file or directory

compilation terminated.

If there’s a syntax error, you get a message from the compiler:

hello.c: In function 'main':

hello.c:6:1: error: expected ';' before '}' token

If you use a function that’s not defined in any of the standard libraries, you
get a message from the linker:

/tmp/cc7iAUbN.o: In function `main':

hello.c:(.text+0xf): undefined reference to `printff'
collect2: error: ld returned 1 exit status

ld is the name of the Unix linker, so named because “loading” is another

step in the compilation process that is closely related to linking.

Once the program starts, C does very little run-time checking, so there are
only a few run-time errors you are likely to see. If you divide by zero, or
perform another illegal floating-point operation, you will get a “Floating
point exception.” And if you try to read or write an incorrect location in
memory, you will get a “Segmentation fault.”
8 Chapter 1. Compilation
Chapter 2

Processes

2.1 Abstraction and virtualization

Before we talk about processes, I want to define a few words:

• Abstraction: An abstraction is a simplified representation of some-

thing complicated. For example, if you drive a car, you understand
that when you turn the wheel left, the car goes left, and vice versa. Of
course, the steering wheel is connected to a sequence of mechanical
and (often) hydraulic systems that turn the wheels, and the wheels in-
teract with the road in ways that can be complex, but as a driver, you
normally don’t have to think about any of those details. You can get
along very well with a simple mental model of steering. Your mental
model is an abstraction.
Similarly, when you use a web browser, you understand that when
you click on a link, the browser displays the page the link refers to.
The software and network communication that make that possible are
complex, but as a user, you don’t have to know the details.
A large part of software engineering is designing abstractions, like
these, that allow users and other programmers to use powerful and
complicated systems without having to know about the details of their
implementation.

• Virtualization: An important kind of abstraction is virtualization,

which is the process of creating a desirable illusion.
For example, many public libraries participate in inter-library collab-
orations that allow them to borrow books from each other. When I
10 Chapter 2. Processes

request a book, sometimes the book is on the shelf at my local library,

but other times is has to be transferred from another collection. Either
way, I get a notification when it is available for pickup. I don’t need to
know where it came from, and I don’t need to know which books my
library has. As a whole, the system creates the illusion that my library
has every book in the world.
The collection physically located at my local library might be small,
but the collection available to me virtually includes every book in the
inter-library collaboration.
As another example, most computers are only connected to one net-
work, but that network is connected to others, and so on. What we call
the Internet is a collection of networks and a set of protocols that for-
ward packets from one network to the next. From the point of view of
a user or programmer, the system behaves as if every computer on the
Internet is connected to every other computer. The number of physi-
cal connections is small, but the number of virtual connections is very
large.

The word “virtual” is often used in the context of a virtual machine, which is
software that creates the illusion of a dedicated computer running a particu-
lar operating system, when in reality the virtual machine might be running,
along with many other virtual machines, on a computer running a different
operating system.
In the context of virtualization, we sometimes call what is really happening
“physical”, and what is virtually happening either “logical” or “abstract.”

2.2 Isolation
One of the most important principles of engineering is isolation: when you
are designing a system with multiple components, it is usually a good idea
to isolate them from each other so that a change in one component doesn’t
have undesired effects on other components.
One of the most important goals of an operating system is to isolate each
running program from the others so that programmers don’t have to think
about every possible interaction. The software object that provides this iso-
lation is a process.
A process is a software object that represents a running program. I mean
“software object” in the sense of object-oriented programming; in general,
2.2. Isolation 11

an object contains data and provides methods that operate on the data. A
process is an object that contains the following data:

• The text of the program, usually a sequence of machine language in-

structions,

• Data associated with the program, including static data (allocated at

compile time) and dynamic data including the run-time stack and the
heap,

• The state of any pending input/output operations. For example, if the

process is waiting for data to be read from disk or for a packet to arrive
on a network, the status of these operations is part of the process, and

• The hardware state of the program, which includes data stored in reg-
isters, status information, and the program counter, which indicates
which instruction is currently executing.

Usually one process runs one program, but it is also possible for a process
to load and run a new program.
It is also possible, and common, to run the same program in more than
one process. In that case, the processes share the same program text, but
generally have different data and hardware states.
Most operating systems provide a fundamental set of capabilities to isolate
processes from each other:

• Multitasking: Most operating systems have the ability to interrupt a

running process at almost any time, save its hardware state, and then
resume the process later. In general, programmers don’t have to think
about these interruptions. The program behaves as if it is running
continuously on a dedicated processor, except that the time between
instructions is unpredictable.

• Virtual memory: Most operating systems create the illusion that each
process has its own chunk of memory, isolated from all other pro-
cesses. Again, programmers generally don’t have to think about how
virtual memory works; they can proceed as if every program has a
dedicated chunk of memory.

• Device abstraction: Processes running on the same computer share the

disk drive, the network interface, the graphics card, and other hard-
ware. If processes interacted with this hardware directly, without co-
ordination, chaos would ensue. For example, network data intended
12 Chapter 2. Processes

for one process might be read by another. Or multiple processes might

try to store data in the same location on a hard drive. It is up to the
operating system to maintain order by providing appropriate abstrac-
tions.

As a programmer, you don’t need to know much about how these capabili-
ties are implemented. But if you are curious, you will find a lot of interest-
ing things going on under the metaphorical hood. And if you know what’s
going on, it can make you a better programmer.

2.3 Unix processes

While I write this book, the process I am most aware of is my text editor,
emacs. Every once in a while I switch to a terminal window, which is a
window running a Unix shell that provides a command-line interface.
When I move the mouse, the window manager wakes up, sees that the
mouse is over the terminal window, and wakes up the terminal. The ter-
minal wakes up the shell. If I type make in the shell, it creates a new process
to run Make, which creates another process to run LaTeX and then another
process to display the results.
If I need to look something up, I might switch to another desktop, which
wakes up the window manager again. If I click on the icon for a web
browser, the window manager creates a process to run the web browser.
Some browsers, like Chrome, create a new process for each window and
each tab.
And those are just the processes I am aware of. At the same time there
are many other processes running “in the background.” Many of them are
performing operations related to the operating system.
The Unix command ps prints information about running processes. If you
run it in a terminal, you might see something like this:

PID TTY TIME CMD

2687 pts/1 00:00:00 bash
2801 pts/1 00:01:24 emacs
24762 pts/1 00:00:00 ps

The first column is the unique numerical process ID. The second column
is the terminal that created the process; “TTY” stands for teletypewriter,
which was the original mechanical terminal.
2.3. Unix processes 13

The third column is the total processor time used by the process, and the
last column is the name of the running program. In this example, bash is
the name of the shell that interprets the commands I type in the terminal,
emacs is my text editor, and ps is the process generating this output.

By default, ps lists only the processes associated with the current terminal.
If you use the -e flag, you get every process (including processes belonging
to other users, which is a security flaw, in my opinion).

On my system there are currently 233 processes. Here are some of them:

PID TTY TIME CMD

1 ? 00:00:17 init
2 ? 00:00:00 kthreadd
3 ? 00:00:02 ksoftirqd/0
4 ? 00:00:00 kworker/0:0
8 ? 00:00:00 migration/0
9 ? 00:00:00 rcu_bh
10 ? 00:00:16 rcu_sched
47 ? 00:00:00 cpuset
48 ? 00:00:00 khelper
49 ? 00:00:00 kdevtmpfs
50 ? 00:00:00 netns
51 ? 00:00:00 bdi-default
52 ? 00:00:00 kintegrityd
53 ? 00:00:00 kblockd
54 ? 00:00:00 ata_sff
55 ? 00:00:00 khubd
56 ? 00:00:00 md
57 ? 00:00:00 devfreq_wq

init is the first process created when the operating system starts. It creates
many of the other processes, and then sits idle until the processes it created
are done.

kthreadd is a process the operating system uses to create new “threads.”

We’ll talk more about threads soon, but for now you can think of a thread
as kind of a process. The k at the beginning stands for “kernel” which is the
part of the operating system responsible for core capabilities like creating
threads. The extra d at the end stands for “daemon”, which is another name
for processes like this that run in the background and provide operating
system services. In this context, “daemon” is used in the classical sense of a
helpful spirit, with no connotation of evil.
14 Chapter 2. Processes

Based on the name, you can infer that ksoftirqd is also a kernel daemon;
specifically, it handles software interrupt requests, or “soft IRQ”.

kworker is a worker process created by the kernel to do some kind of pro-

cessing for the kernel.

There are often multiple processes running these kernel services. On my

system at the moment, there are 8 ksoftirqd processes and 35 kworker pro-
cesses.

I won’t go into more details about the other processes, but you might be
interested to search for more information about some of them. Also, you
should run ps on your system and compare your results to mine.
Chapter 3

Virtual memory

3.1 A bit of information theory

A bit is a binary digit; it is also a unit of information. If you have one bit,
you can specify one of two possibilities, usually written 0 and 1. If you have
two bits, there are 4 possible combinations, 00, 01, 10, and 11. In general, if
you have b bits, you can indicate one of 2b values. A byte is 8 bits, so it can
hold one of 256 values.
Going in the other direction, suppose you want to store a letter of the al-
phabet. There are 26 letters, so how many bits do you need? With 4 bits,
you can specify one of 16 values, so that’s not enough. With 5 bits, you can
specify up to 32 values, so that’s enough for all the letters, with a few values
left over.
In general, if you want to specify one of N values, you should choose the
smallest value of b so that 2b ≥ N. Taking the log base 2 of both sides yields
b ≥ log2 N.
Suppose I flip a coin and tell you the outcome. I have given you one bit
of information. If I roll a six-sided die and tell you the outcome, I have
given you log2 6 bits of information. And in general, if the probability of the
outcome is 1 in N, then the outcome contains log2 N bits of information.
Equivalently, if the probability of the outcome is p, then the information
content is −log2 p. This quantity is called the “self-information” of the out-
come. It measures how surprising the outcome is, which is why it is also
called “surprisal.” If your horse has only one chance in 16 of winning, and
he wins, you get 4 bits of information (along with the payout). But if the
favorite wins 75% of the time, the news of the win contains only 0.42 bits.
16 Chapter 3. Virtual memory

Intuitively, unexpected news carries a lot of information; conversely, if there

is something you were already confident of, confirming it contributes only
a small amount of information.

For several topics in this book, we will need to be comfortable converting

back and forth between the number of bits, b, and the number of values
they can encode, N = 2b .

3.2 Memory and storage

While a process is running, most of its data is held in “main memory”,
which is usually some kind of random access memory (RAM). On most
current computers, main memory is volatile, which means that when the
computer shuts down, the contents of main memory are lost. A current typ-
ical desktop computer has 1–8 GiB of memory. GiB stands for “gibibyte,”
which is 230 bytes.

If the process reads and writes files, those files are usually stored on a hard
disk drive (HDD) or solid state drive (SSD). These storage devices are non-
volatile, so they are used for long-term storage. Currently a typical desktop
computer has a HDD with a capacity of 500 GB to 2 TB. GB stands for “gi-
gabyte,” which is 109 bytes. TB stands for “terabyte,” which is 1012 bytes.

You might have noticed that I used the binary unit GiB for the size of main
memory and the decimal units GB and TB for the size of the HDD. For
historical and technical reasons, memory is measured in binary units, and
disk drives are measured in decimal units. In this book I will be careful
to distinguish binary and decimal units, but you should be aware that the
word “gigabyte” and the abbreviation GB are often used ambiguously.

In casual use, the term “memory” is sometimes used for HDDs and SDDs
as well as RAM, but the properties of these devices are very different, so
we will need to distinguish them. I will use “storage” to refer to HDDs and
SDDs.

3.3 Address spaces

Each byte in main memory is specified by an integer “physical address.”
The set of valid physical addresses is called the physical “address space.”
It usually runs from 0 to N − 1, where N is the size of main memory. On a
3.4. Memory segments 17

system with 1 GB of physical memory, the highest valid address is 230 − 1,

which is 1,073,741,823 in decimal, or 0x03ff ffff in hexadecimal (the prefix 0x
indicates a hexadecimal number).

However, most operating systems provide “virtual memory,” which means

that programs never deal with physical addresses, and don’t have to know
how much physical memory is available.

Instead, programs work with virtual addresses, which are numbered from
0 to M − 1, where M is the number of valid virtual address. The size of
the virtual address space is determined by the operating system and the
hardware it runs on.

You have probably heard people talk about 32-bit and 64-bit systems. These
terms indicate the size of the registers, which is usually also the size of a
virtual address. On a 32-bit system, virtual addresses are 32 bits, which
means that the virtual address space runs from 0 to 0xffff ffff. The size of
this address space is 232 bytes, or 4 GiB.

On a 64-bit system, the size of the virtual address space is 264 bytes, or 4 ·
10246 bytes. That’s 16 exbibytes, which is about a billion times bigger than
current physical memories. It might seem strange that a virtual address
space can be so much bigger than physical memory, but we will see soon
how that works.

When a program reads and writes values in memory, it generates virtual

addresses. The hardware, with help from the operating system, translates
to physical addresses before accessing main memory. This translation is
done on a per-process basis, so even if two processes generate the same
virtual address, they would map to different locations in physical memory.

Thus, virtual memory is one important way the operating system isolates
processes from each other. In general, a process cannot access data belong-
ing to another process, because there is no virtual address it can generate
that maps to physical memory allocated to another process.

3.4 Memory segments

The data of a running process is organized into 4 segments:

• The text segment contains the program text; that is, the machine lan-
guage instructions that make up the program.
18 Chapter 3. Virtual memory

• The static segment contains variables that are allocated by the com-
piler, including global variables and local variables that are declared
static.

• The stack segment contains the run-time stack, which is made up of

stack frames. Each stack frame contains the parameters and local vari-
ables of a function.

• The heap segment contains chunks of memory allocated at run time,

usually by calling the C library function malloc.

The arrangement of these segments is determined partly by the compiler

and partly by the operating system. The details vary from one system to
another, but in the most common arrangement:

• The text segment is near the “bottom” of memory; that is at addresses

near 0.

• The static segment is often just above the text segment.

• The stack is near the top of memory; that is, near the highest addresses
in the virtual address space. As the stack expands, it grows down
toward smaller addresses.

• The heap is often above the static segment. As it expands, it grows up

toward larger addresses.

To determine the layout of these segments on your system, try running this
program (you can download it from http://todo):

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>

int global;

int main ()
{
int local = 5;
void *p = malloc(128);

printf ("Address of main is %p\n", main);

printf ("Address of global is %p\n", &global);
printf ("Address of local is %p\n", &local);
3.5. Address translation 19

printf ("Address of p is %p\n", p);

return 0;
}
main is the name of a function; when it is used as a variable, it refers to the
address of the first machine language instruction in main, which we expect
to be in the text segment.
global is a global variable, so we expect it to be in the static segment. local
is a local variable, so we expect it to be on the stack.
And p contains an address returned by malloc, which allocates space in the
heap. “malloc” stands for “memory allocate.”
When I run this program, the output looks like this (I added spaces to make
it easier to read):
Address of main is 0x 40057c
Address of global is 0x 60104c
Address of local is 0x7fffd26139c4
Address of p is 0x 1c3b010
As expected, the address of main is the lowest, followed by global and p.
The address of local is much bigger. It has 12 hexadecimal digits. Each hex
digit corresponds to 4 bits, so it is a 48-bit address. That suggests that the
usable part of the virtual address space is 248 bytes.
Exercise 3.1 Run this program on your computer and compare your results
to mine.
Add a second call to malloc and check whether the heap on your system
grows up (toward larger addresses). Add a function that prints the address
of a local variable, and check whether the stack grows down.

3.5 Address translation

How does a virtual address (VA) get translated to a physical address (PA)?
The basic mechanism is simple, but a simple implementation would be too
slow and take too much space. So actual implementations are a bit more
complicated.
Most processors provide a memory management unit (MMU) that sits be-
tween the CPU and main memory. The MMU performs fast translation be-
tween VAs and PAs.
20 Chapter 3. Virtual memory

1. When a program reads or writes a variable, the CPU generates a VA.

2. The MMU splits the VA into two parts, called the page number and
the offset. A “page” is a chunk of memory; the size of a page depends
on the operating system and the hardware, but common sizes are 1–4
KiB.

3. The MMU looks up the page number in the “page table” and gets the
corresponding physical page number. Then it combines the physical
page number with the offset to produce a PA.

4. The PA is passed to main memory, which reads or writes the given

location.

As an example, suppose that the VA is 32 bits and the physical memory is 1

GiB, divided into 1 KiB pages.

• Since 1 GiB is 230 bytes and 1 KiB is 210 bytes, there are 220 physical
pages, sometimes called “frames.”

• The size of the virtual address space is 232 B and the size of a page is
210 B, so there are 222 virtual pages.

• The size of the offset is determined by the page size. In this example
the page size is 210 B, so it takes 10 bits to specify a byte on a page.

• If a VA is 32 bits and the offset is 10 bits, the remaining 22 bits make

up the virtual page number.

• Since there are 220 physical pages, each physical page number is 20
bits. Adding in the 10 bit offset, the resulting PAs are 30 bits.

So far this all seems feasible. But let’s think about how big a page table
might have to be. The simplest implementation of a page table is an array
with one entry for each virtual page. Each entry would contain a physical
page number, which is 20 bits in this example, plus some additional infor-
mation about each frame. So we expect 3–4 bytes per entry. But with 222
virtual pages, the page table would require 224 bytes, or 16 MiB.

And since we need a page table for each process, a system running 256
processes would need 232 bytes, or 4 GiB, just for page tables! And that’s
just with 32-bit virtual addresses. With 48- or 64-bit VAs, the numbers are
ridiculous.
3.5. Address translation 21

Fortunately, nothing like that much space is actually needed, because most
processes don’t use even a small fraction of their virtual address space. And
if a process doesn’t use a virtual page, we don’t need an entry in the page
table for it.

Another way to say the same thing is that page tables are “sparse,” which
implies that the simple implementation, an array of page table entries, is a
bad idea. Fortunately, there are several good implementations for sparse
arrays.

One option is a multilevel page table, which is what many operating sys-
tems, including Linux, use. Another option is an associative table, where
each entry includes both the virtual page number and the physical page
number. Searching an associative table can be slow in software, but in hard-
ware we can search the entire table in parallel, so associative arrays are often
used to represent pages tables in the MMU.

You can read more about these implementations at http://en.wikipedia.

org/wiki/Page_table; you might find the details interesting. But the fun-
damental idea is that page tables are sparse, so we have to choose a good
implementation for sparse arrays.

I mentioned earlier that the operating system can interrupt a running pro-
cess, save its state, and then run another process. This mechanism is called
a “context switch.” Since each process has its own page table, the operating
system has to work with the MMU to make sure that each process gets the
right page table. In older machines, the page table information in the MMU
had to be replaced during every context switch, which was expensive. In
newer systems, each page table entry in the MMU includes the process ID,
so page tables from multiple processes can be in the MMU at the same time.
22 Chapter 3. Virtual memory
Chapter 4

Files and file systems

When a process completes (or crashes), any data stored in main memory is
lost. But data stored on a hard disk drive (HDD) or solid state drive (SSD)
is “persistent;” that is, it survives after the process completes, even if the
computer shuts down.

Hard disk drives are complicated. Data is stored in blocks, which are laid
out in sectors, which make up tracks, which are arranged in concentric cir-
cles on platters.

Solid state drives are simpler in one sense, because blocks are numbered se-
quentially, but they raise a different complication: each block can be written
a limited number of times before it becomes unreliable.

As a programmer, you don’t want to deal with these complications. What

you want is an appropriate abstraction of persistent storage hardware. The
most common abstraction is called a “file system.”

Abstractly:

• A “file system” is a mapping from a file name to a file. If you think

of file names as keys, and the file contents as values, you can think
of a file system as a simple key-value store, which is one category of
NoSQL database. (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NoSQL).

• A “file” is a sequence of bytes.

File names are usually strings, and they are usually “hierarchical;” that is,
the string specifies a path from a top-level directory (or folder), through a
series of subdirectories, to a specific file.
24 Chapter 4. Files and file systems

The primary difference between the abstraction and the underlying mecha-
nism is that files are byte-based and persistent storage is block-based. The
operating system translates byte-based file operations in the C library into
block-based operations on storage devices. Typical block sizes are 1–8 KiB.
For example, the following code opens a file and reads the first byte:

FILE *fp = fopen("/home/downey/file.txt", "r");

char c = fgetc(fp);
fclose(fp);

When this code runs:

1. fopen uses the filename to find the top-level directory, called /, the
subdirectory home, and the sub-subdirectory downey.
2. It finds the file named file.txt and “opens” it for reading, which
means it creates a data structure that represents the file being read.
Among other things, this data structure keeps track of how much of
the file has been read, called the “file position.”
In DOS, this data structure is called a File Control Block, but I want to
avoid that term because in UNIX it means something else. In UNIX,
there seems to be no good name for it. It is an entry in the open file
table, but “open file table entry” is hard to parse, so I will call it an
OpenFileTableEntry.
3. When we call fgetc, the operating system checks whether the next
character of the file is already in memory. If so, it reads the next char-
acter, advances the file position, and returns the result.
4. If the next character is not in memory, the operating system issues an
I/O request to get the next block. Disk drives are slow, so a process
waiting for a block from disk is usually interrupted so another process
can run until the data arrives.
5. When the I/O operation is complete, the new block of data is stored
in memory, and the process resumes.
6. When the process closes the file, the operating system completes any
pending operations, removes any data stored in memory, and frees
the OpenFileTableEntry.

The process for writing a file is similar, but there are some additional steps.
Here is an example that opens a file for writing and changes the first char-
acter.
4.1. Disk performance 25

FILE *fp = fopen("/home/downey/file.txt", "w");

fputc('b', fp);
fclose(fp);

When this code runs:

1. Again, fopen uses the filename to find the file. If it does not already
exist, it creates a new file and adds an entry in the parent directory,
/home/downey.

2. The operating system creates an OpenFileTableEntry that indicates

that the file is open for writing, and sets the file position to 0.

3. fputc attempts to write (or re-write) the first byte of the file. If the
file already exists, the operating system has to load the first block into
memory. Otherwise it allocates a new block in memory and requests
a new block on disk.

4. After the block in memory is modified, it might not be copied back

to the disk right away. In general, data written to a file is “buffered,”
which means it is stored in memory and only written to disk when
there is at least one block to write.

5. When the file is closed, any buffered data is written to disk and the
OpenFileTableEntry is freed.

To summarize, the C library provides the abstraction of a file system that

maps from file names to streams of bytes. This abstraction is built on top of
storage devices that are actually organized in blocks.

4.1 Disk performance

I mentioned earlier that disk drives are slow. On current HDDs, the time
to read a block from disk to memory is typically 2–6 ms. SSDs are faster,
taking 25 µs to read a 4 KiB block and 250 µs to write one (see http://en.
wikipedia.org/wiki/Ssd#Controller).
To put these numbers in perspective, let’s compare them to the clock cycle
of the CPU. A processor with clock rate 2 GHz completes one clock cycle
every 0.5 ns. The time to get a byte from memory to the CPU is typically
around 100 ns. If the processor completes one instruction per clock cycle, it
would complete 200 instructions while waiting for a byte from memory.
26 Chapter 4. Files and file systems

In one microsecond, it would complete 2000 instructions, so while waiting

for a byte from an SSD, it would complete 50,000.
In one millisecond, it would complete 2,000,000 instructions, so while wait-
ing for a byte from a HDD, it might complete 10 million. If there’s nothing
for the CPU to do while it waits, it would be idle. That’s why the operating
system generally switches to another process while one is waiting for disk.
The gap in performance between main memory and persistent storage is
one of the major challenges of computer system design. Operating systems
and hardware provide several features intended to “fill in” this gap:

• Block transfers: The time it takes to load a single byte from disk is
about 5 ms. By comparison, the additional time to load an 8 KiB block
is negligible. If the processor does 5 ms of work on each block, it might
be possible to keep the processor busy.
• Prefetching: Sometimes the operating system can predict that a pro-
cess will read a block and start loading it before it is requested. For
example, if you open a file and read the first block, there is a good
chance you will go on to read the second block. The operating system
might start loading additional blocks before they are requested.
• Buffering: As I mentioned, when you write a file, the operating sys-
tem stores the data in memory and only writes it to disk later. If you
modify the block several times while it is in memory, the system only
has to write it to disk once.
• Caching: If a process has used a block recently, it is likely to use it
again soon. If the operating system keeps a copy of the block in mem-
ory, it can handle future requests at memory speed.

Some of these features are also implemented in hardware. For example,

some disk drives provide a cache that stores recently-used blocks, and many
disk drives read more than one block at a time, even if only one is requested.
These mechanisms generally improve the performance of programs, but
they don’t change the behavior. Usually programmers don’t have to think
about them, with two exceptions: (1) if the performance of a program is
unexpectedly bad, you might have to know something about these mech-
anisms to diagnose the problem, and (2) when data is buffered, it can be
harder to debug a program. For example, if a program prints a value and
then crashes, the value might not appear, because it might be in a buffer.
Similarly, if a program writes data to disk and then the computer loses
power, the data might be lost if it is in a cache and not yet on disk.
4.2. Disk metadata 27

4.2 Disk metadata

The blocks that make up a file might be arranged contiguously on disk, and
file system performance is generally better if they are, but most operating
systems don’t require contiguous allocation. They are free to place a block
anywhere on disk, and they use various data structures to keep track of
them.
In many UNIX file systems, that data structure is called an “inode,” which
stands for “index node.” More generally, information about files, including
the location of their blocks, is called “metadata.” (The content of the file is
data, so information about the file is data about data, hence “meta”).
Since inodes reside on disk along with the rest of the data, they are designed
to fit neatly into disk blocks. An UNIX inode contains IDs for the owner of
the file and the group associated with it, permission flags indicating who is
allowed to read, write, or execute it, and timestamps that indicate when it
was last modified and accessed. In addition, it contains block numbers for
the first 12 blocks that make up the file.
If the block size is 8 KiB, the first 12 blocks make up 96 KiB. On most sys-
tems, that’s big enough for a large majority of files, but it’s obviously not
big enough for all of them. That’s why the inode also contains a pointer to
an “indirection block,” which contains nothing but pointers to other blocks.
The number of pointers in an indirection block depends on the sizes of the
blocks and the block numbers, but it is often 1024. With 1024 block numbers
and 8 KiB blocks, an indirection block can address 8 MiB. That’s big enough
for all but the largest files, but still not big enough for all.
That’s why the inode also contains a pointer to a “double indirection block,”
which contains pointers to indirection blocks. With 1024 indirection blocks,
we can address 8 GiB.
And if that’s not big enough, there is (finally) a triple indirection block,
which contains pointers to double indirection blocks, yielding a maximum
file size of 8 TiB. When UNIX inodes were designed, that seemed big enough
to serve for a long time. But that was a long time ago.
As an alternative to indirection blocks, some files systems, like FAT, use a
File Allocation Table that contains one entry for each block (called a “clus-
ter” in this context). A root directory contains a pointer to the first cluster
in each file. The FAT entry for each cluster points to the next cluster in
the file, similar to a linked list. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_
Allocation_Table.
28 Chapter 4. Files and file systems

4.3 Block allocation

File systems have to keep track of which blocks belong to each file; they also
have to keep track of which blocks are available for use. When a new file is
created, the file system finds an available block and allocates it. When a file
is deleted, the file system makes its blocks available for re-allocation.

The goals of the block allocation system are:

• Speed: Allocating and freeing blocks should be fast.

• Minimal space use: The data structures used by the allocator should
be small, leaving as much space as possible for data.

• Minimal fragmentation: If some blocks are left unused, or some are

only partially used, the unused space is called “fragmentation.”

• Maximum contiguity: Data that is likely to be used at the same time

should be physically contiguous, if possible, to improve performance.

It is hard to design a file system that achieves all of these goals, especially
since file system performance depends on “workload characteristics,” that
include file sizes, access patterns, etc. A file system that is well tuned for
one workload might not perform as well for a different workload.

For this reason, most operating systems support several kinds of file sys-
tems, and file system design is an active area of research and development.
In the last decade, Linux systems have migrated from ext2, which was a
conventional UNIX file system, to ext3, a “journaling” file system intended
to improve speed and contiguity, and more recently to ext4, which can han-
dle larger files and file systems. Within the next few years, there might be
another migration to the B-tree file system, Btrfs.

4.4 Everything is a file?

The file abstraction is really a “stream of bytes” abstraction, which turns out
to be useful for many things, not just file systems.

One example is the UNIX pipe, which is a simple form of inter-process

communication. Processes can be set up so that output from one process
is taken as input into another process. For the first process, the pipe be-
haves like a file open for writing, so it can use C library functions like fputs
4.4. Everything is a file? 29

and fprintf. For the second process, the pipe behaves like a file open for
reading, so it uses fgets and fscanf.

Network communication also uses the stream of bytes abstraction. A UNIX

socket is a data structure that represents a communication channel between
processes on different computers (usually). Again, processes can read data
from and write data to a socket using “file” handling functions.

Reusing the file abstraction makes life easier for programmers, since they
only have to learn one API (application program interface). It also makes
programs more versatile, since a program intended to work with files can
also work with data coming from pipes and other sources.
30 Chapter 4. Files and file systems
Chapter 5

More bits and bytes

5.1 Representing integers

You probably know that computers represent numbers in base 2, also
known as binary. For positive numbers, the binary representation is
straightforward; for example, the representation for 510 is b101.

For negative numbers, the most obvious representation uses a sign bit to
indicate whether a number is positive or negative. But there is another rep-
resentation, called “two’s complement” that is much more common because
it is easier to work with in hardware.

To find the two’s complement of a negative number, − x, find the binary

representation of x, flip all the bits, and add 1. For example, to represent
−510 , start with the representation of 510 , which is b00000101 if we write the
8-bit version. Flipping all the bits and adding 1 yields b11111011.

In two’s complement, the leftmost bit acts like a sign bit; it is 0 for positive
numbers and 1 for negative numbers.

To convert from an 8-bit number to 16-bits, we have to add more 0’s for a
positive number and add 1’s for a negative number. In effect, we have to
copy the sign bit into the new bits. This process is called “sign extension.”

In C all integer types are signed (able to represent positive and negative
numbers) unless you declare them unsigned. Operations on unsigned inte-
gers don’t use sign extension.
32 Chapter 5. More bits and bytes

5.2 Bitwise operators

People learning C are sometimes confused about the bitwise operators &
and |. These operators treat integers as bit vectors and compute logical
operations on corresponding bits.

For example, & computes the AND operation, which yields 1 if both
operands are 1, and 0 otherwise. Here is an example of & applied to two
4-bit numbers:

1100
& 1010
----
1000

In C, this means that the expression 12 & 10 has the value 8.

Similarly, | computes the OR operation, which yields 1 if either operand is

1, and 0 otherwise.

1100
| 1010
----
1110

So the expression 12 | 10 has the value 14.

Finally, ^ computes the XOR operation, which yields 1 if either operand is

1, but not both.

1100
^ 1010
----
0110

So the expression 12 ^ 10 has the value 6.

Most commonly, & is used to clear a set of bits from a bit vector, | is used to
set bits, and ^ is used to flip, or “toggle” bits. Here are the details:

Clearing bits: For any value x, x&0 is 0, and x&1 is x. So if you AND a
vector with 3, it selects only the two rightmost bits, and sets the rest to 0.
5.3. Representing floating-point numbers 33

xxxx
& 0011
----
00xx

In this context, the value 3 is called a “mask” because it selects some bits
and masks the rest.

Setting bits: Similarly, for any x, x |0 is x, and x |1 is 1. So if you OR a vector

with 3, it sets the rightmost bits, and leaves the rest alone:

xxxx
| 0011
----
xx11

Toggling bits: Finally, if you XOR a vector with 3, it flips the rightmost bits
and leaves the rest alone. As an exercise, see if you can compute the two’s
complement of 12 using ^. Hint: what’s the two’s complement representa-
tion of -1?

C also provides shift operators,  and , which shift bits left and right. Each
left shift doubles a number, so 5  1 is 10, and 5  2 is 20. Each right shift
divides by two (rounding down), so 5  1 is 2 and 5  1 is 1.

5.3 Representing floating-point numbers

Floating-point numbers are represented using the binary version of scien-
tific notation. In decimal notation, large numbers are written as the product
of a coefficient and 10 raised to an exponent. For example, the speed of light
in m/s is approximately 2.998 · 108 .

Most computers use the IEEE standard for floating-point arithmetic. The C
type float usually corresponds to the 32-bit IEEE standard; double usually
corresponds to the 64-bit standard.

In the 32-bit standard, the leftmost bit is the sign bit, s. The next 8 bits are
the exponent, q, and the last 23 bits are the coefficient, c. The value of a
floating-point number is
(−1)s c · 2q
34 Chapter 5. More bits and bytes

Well, that’s almost correct, but there is one more wrinkle. Floating-point
numbers are usually normalized so that there is one digit before the point.
For example, in base 10, we prefer 2.998 · 108 rather than 2998 · 105 or any
other equivalent expression. In base 2, a normalized number always has the
digit 1 before the binary point. Since the digit in this location is always 1,
we can save space by leaving it out of the representation.

For example, the integer representation of 1310 is b1101. In floating point,

that’s 1.101 · 23 , so the exponent is 3 and the part of the coefficient that would
be stored is 101 (followed by 20 zeros).

Well, that’s almost correct. But there’s one more wrinkle. The exponent is
stored with a “bias”. In the 32-bit standard, the bias is 127, so the exponent
3 would be stored as 130.

To pack and unpack floating-point numbers in C, we can use a union and

bitwise operations. Here’s an example:

union {
float f;
unsigned int u;
} p;

p.f = -13.0;
unsigned int sign = (p.u >> 31) & 1;
unsigned int exp = (p.u >> 23) & 0xff;

unsigned int coef_mask = (1 << 23) - 1;

unsigned int coef = p.u & coef_mask;

printf("%d\n", sign);
printf("%d\n", exp);
printf("0x%x\n", coef);

The union allows us to store a floating-point value using p.f and then read
it as an unsigned integer using p.u.

To get the sign bit, we shift the bits to the right 31 places and then use a 1-bit
mask to select only the rightmost bit.

To get the exponent, we shift the bits 23 places, then select the rightmost 8
bits (the hexadecimal value 0xff has eight 1’s).
5.4. Unions and memory errors 35

To get the coefficient, we need to extract the 23 rightmost bits and ignore the
rest. We do that by making a mask with 1s in the 23 rightmost places and 0s
on the left. The easiest way to do that is by shifting 1 to the left by 23 places
and then subtracting 1.
The output of this program is:

1
130
0x500000

As expected, the sign bit for a negative number is 1. The exponent is 130,
including the bias. And the coefficient, which I printed in hexadecimal, is
101 followed by 20 zeros.
As an exercise, try assembling and disassembling a double, which uses
the 64-bit standard. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_floating_
point.

5.4 Unions and memory errors

There are two common uses of C unions. One, which we saw in the previous
section, is to access the binary representation of data. Another is to store
heterogeneous data. For example, you could use a union to represent a
number that might be an integer, float, complex, or rational number.
However, unions are error-prone. It is up to you, as the programmer, to
keep track of what type of data is in the union; if you write a floating-point
value and then interpret it as an integer, the result is usually nonsense.
Actually, the same thing can happen if you read a location in memory in-
correctly. One way that can happen is if you read past the end of an array.
To see what happens, I’ll start with a function that allocates an array on the
stack and fills it with the numbers from 0 to 99.
void f1() {
int i;
int array[100];

for (i=0; i<100; i++) {

array[i] = i;
}
}
36 Chapter 5. More bits and bytes

Next I’ll define a function that creates a smaller array and deliberately ac-
cesses elements before the beginning and after the end:

void f2() {
int x = 17;
int array[10];
int y = 123;

printf("%d\n", array[-2]);
printf("%d\n", array[-1]);
printf("%d\n", array[10]);
printf("%d\n", array[11]);
}

If I call f1 and then f2, I get these results:

17
123
98
99

The details here depend on the compiler, which arranges variables on the
stack. From these results, we can infer that the compile put x and y next to
each other, “below” the array (at a lower address). And when we read past
the array, it looks like we are getting values that were left on the stack by
the previous function call.

In this example, all of the variables are integers, so it is relatively easy to fig-
ure out what is going on. But in general when you read beyond the bounds
of an array, the values you read might have any type. For example, if I
change f1 to make an array of floats, the results are:

17
123
1120141312
1120272384

The latter two values are what you get if you interpret a floating-point value
as an integer. If you encountered this output while debugging, you would
have a hard time figuring out what’s going on.
5.5. Representing strings 37

5.5 Representing strings

Related issues sometimes come up with strings. First, remember that C
strings are null-terminated. When you allocate space for a string, don’t for-
get the extra byte at the end.

Also, remember that the letters and numbers in C strings are encoded in
ASCII. The ASCII codes for the digits “0” through “9” are 48 through 57,
not 0 through 9. The ASCII code 0 is the NUL character that marks the end
of a string. And the ASCII codes 1 through 9 are special characters used in
some communication protocols. ASCII code 7 is a bell; on some terminals,
printing it makes a sound.

The ASCII code for the letter “A” is 65; the code for “a” is 97. here are those
codes in binary:

65 = b0100 0001
97 = b0110 0001

A careful observer will notice that they differ by a single bit. And this pat-
tern holds for the rest of the letters; the sixth bit (counting from the right)
acts as a “case bit,” 0 for upper-case letters and 1 for lower case letters.

As an exercise, write a function that takes a string and converts from lower-
case to upper-case by flipping the sixth bit. As a challenge, you can make a
faster version by reading the string 32 or 64 bits at a time, rather than one
character at a time. This optimization is made easier if the length of the
string is a multiple of 4 or 8 bytes.

If you read past the end of a string, you are likely to see strange characters.
Conversely, if you write a string and then accidentally read it as an int or
float, the results will be hard to interpret.

For example, if you run:

char array[] = "allen";

float *p = array;
printf("%f\n", *p);

You will find that the ASCII representation of the first 8 characters of
my name, interpreted as a double-precision floating point number, is
69779713878800585457664.
38 Chapter 5. More bits and bytes
Chapter 6

Memory management

C provides 4 functions for dynamic memory allocation:

• malloc, which takes an integer size, in bytes, and returns a pointer to

a newly-allocated chunk of memory with (at least) the given size. If it
can’t satisfy the request, it returns the special pointer value NULL.

• calloc, which is the same as malloc except that it also clears the newly
allocated chunk; that is, sets all bytes in the chunk to 0.

• realloc, which takes a pointer to a previously allocated chunk and a

new size. It allocates a chunk of memory with the new size, copies
data from the old chunk to the new, and returns a pointer to the new
chunk.

• free, which takes a pointer to a previously allocated chunk and deal-

locates it; that is, makes the space available for future allocation.

This API is notoriously error-prone and unforgiving. Memory management

is one of the most challenging parts of designing large software systems,
which is why most modern language provide higher-level memory man-
agement features like garbage collection.

6.1 Memory errors

The C memory management API is a bit like Jasper Beardly, a minor charac-
ter on the animated television program The Simpson, who appears as a strict
40 Chapter 6. Memory management

substitute teacher who imposes corporal punishment, a “paddlin,”’ for all

infractions.

Here are some of things a program can do that deserve a paddling:

• If you access any chunk that has not been allocated, that’s a paddling.

• If you free an allocated chunk and then access it, that’s a paddling.

• If you try to free a chunk that has not been allocated, that’s a paddling.

• If you free the same chunk more than once, that’s a paddling.

• If you call realloc with a chunk that was not allocated, or was allo-
cated and then freed, that’s a paddling.

It might not sound difficult to follow these rules, but in a large program a
chunk of memory might be allocated in one part of the program, used in
several other parts, and freed in yet another part. So changes in one part of
the program can require changes in many other parts.

Also, there might be many aliases, or references to the same allocated

chunk, in different parts of the program. The chunk should not be freed
until all references to the chunk are no longer in use. Getting this right often
requires careful analysis across all parts of the program, which is difficult
and contrary to fundamental principles of good software engineering.

Ideally, every function that allocates memory should include, as part of

the documented interface, information about how that memory should be
freed. Mature libraries often do this well, but in the real world, software
engineering practice often falls short of this ideal.

To make matters worse, memory errors can be difficult to find because the
symptoms are unpredictable. For example:

• If you read a value from an unallocated chunk, the system might de-
tect the error, trigger a Segmentation Fault, and stop the program. This
outcome is desirable, because it indicates the location in the program
that caused the error. But, sadly, this outcome is rare. More often, the
program reads unallocated memory without detecting the error, and
the value is whatever happened to be stored at a particular location.
If the value is not interpreted as the right type, it will often cause pro-
gram behavior that is unexpected and hard to interpret. For example,
if you read bytes from a string and interpret them as a floating-point
6.2. Memory leaks 41

value, the result might be an invalid number, or a number that is ex-

tremely large or small. If you pass that value to a function that isn’t
prepared to handle it, the results can be bizarre.

• If you write a value to an unallocated chunk, things are even worse,

because after the bad value is written, a long time might pass before
it is read and causes problems. At that point it will be very difficult to
find the source of the problem.
And things can be even worse than that! One of the most common
problems with C-style memory management is that the data struc-
tures used to implement malloc and free (which we will see soon) are
often stored along with the allocated chunks. So if you accidentally
write past the end of a dynamically-allocated chunk, you are likely
to mangle these data structures. The system usually won’t detect the
problem until much later, when you call malloc or free, and those
functions fail in some inscrutable way.

One conclusion you should draw from this is that safe memory manage-
ment requires design and discipline. If you write a library or module that
allocates memory, you should also provide an interface to free it, and mem-
ory management should be part of the API design from the beginning.

If you use a library that allocates memory, you should be disciplined in your
use of the API. For example, if the library provides functions to allocate and
deallocate storage, you should use those functions and not, for example,
call free on a chunk you did not malloc. And you should avoid keeping
multiple references to the same chunk in different parts of your program.

Often there is a tradeoff between safe memory management and perfor-

mance. For example, the most common source of memory errors is writing
beyond the bounds of an array. The obvious remedy for this problem is
bounds checking; that is, every access to the array should check whether the
index is out of bounds. High-level libraries that provide array-like struc-
tures usually perform bounds checking. But C arrays and most low-level
libraries do not.

6.2 Memory leaks

There is one more memory error that may or may not deserve a paddling. If
you allocate a chunk of memory and never free it, that’s a “memory leak.”
42 Chapter 6. Memory management

For some programs, memory leaks are ok. For example, if your program
allocates memory, performs computations on it, and then exits, it is prob-
ably not necessary to free the allocated memory. When the program exits,
all of its memory is deallocated by the operating system. Freeing memory
immediately before exiting might feel more responsible, but it is mostly a
waste of time.

But if a program runs for a long time and leaks memory, its total memory
use will increase indefinitely. Eventually the program will run out of mem-
ory and, probably, crash. But even before that, a memory hog might slow
down other processes (for reasons we’ll see soon) or cause them to run out
of memory and fail.

Many large complex programs, like web browsers, leak memory, causing
their performance to degrade over time. Users who have observed this pat-
tern are often in the habit of restarting these programs periodically.

To see which programs on your system are using the most memory, you can
use the UNIX utilities ps and top.

6.3 Implementation
When a process starts, the system allocates space for the text segment and
statically allocated data, space for the stack, and space for the heap, which
contains dynamically allocated data.

Not all programs allocate data dynamically, so the initial size of the heap
might be small or zero. Initially the heap contains only one free chunk.

When malloc is called, it checks whether it can find a free chunk that’s big
enough. If not, it has to request more memory from the system. The func-
tion that does that is sbrk, which sets the “program break,” which you can
think of as a pointer to the end of the heap.

When sbrk is called, it allocates new pages of physical memory, updates the
process’s page table, and updates the program break.

In theory, a program could call sbrk directly (without using malloc) and
manage the heap itself. But malloc is easier to use and, for most memory-
use patterns, it runs fast and uses memory efficiently.

Most Linux systems use an implementation of ptmalloc, which is based on

dlmalloc, written by Doug Lea. A short paper that describes key elements
6.3. Implementation 43

of the implementation is available at http://gee.cs.oswego.edu/dl/html/

malloc.html.
For programmers, the most important elements to be aware of are:

• The run time of malloc does not usually depend on the size of the
chunk, but does depend on how many free chunks there are. free is
usually fast, regardless of the number of free chunks. Because calloc
clears every byte in the chunk, the run time depends on chunk size (as
well as the number of free chunks).
realloc is sometimes fast, if the new size is smaller or if space is avail-
able to expand the chunk. If not, it has to copy data from the old chunk
to the new; in that case, the run time depends on the size of the old
chunk.

• Boundary tags: When malloc allocates a chunk, it adds space at the

beginning and end to store information about the chunk, including
its size and the state (allocated or free). These bits of data are called
“boundary tags.” Using these tags, malloc can get from any chunk to
the previous chunk and the next chunk in memory. In addition, free
chunks are chained into a doubly-linked list, so each chunk contains
pointers to the next and previous chunks in the “free list.”
The boundary tags and free list pointers make up malloc’s internal
data structures. These data structures are interspersed with program
data, so it is easy for a program error to damage them.

• Space overhead: Boundary tags and free list pointers take up space.
The minimum chunk size on most systems is 16 bytes. So for very
small chunks, malloc is not space efficient. If your program requires
large numbers of small structures, it might be more efficient to allocate
them in arrays.

• Fragmentation: If you allocate and free chunks with varied sizes, the
heap will tend to become fragmented. That is, the free space might be
broken into many small pieces. Fragmentation wastes space; it also
slows the program down by making memory caches less effective.

• Binning and caching: The free list is sorted by size into bins, so when
malloc searches for a chunk with a particular size, it knows what bin
to search in. Also, if you free a chunk and then immediately allocate a
chunk with the same size, malloc will usually be very fast.
44 Chapter 6. Memory management
Chapter 7

Caching

In order to understand caching, you have to understand how computers

execute programs. For a deep understanding of this topic, you should study
computer architecture. My goal in this chapter is to provide a simple model
of program execution.
When a program starts, the code (or text) is usually on a hard disk or solid
state drive. The operating system creates a new process to run the program,
then the loader copies the text from disk into main memory and starts the
program by calling main.
While the program is running, most of its data is stored in main memory,
but some of the data is in registers, which are small units of memory on the
CPU. These registers include:

• The program counter, or PC, which contains the address (in memory)
of the next instruction in the program.
• The instruction register, or IR, which contains the instruction currently
executing.
• The stack pointer, or SP, which contains the address of the stack frame
for the current function, which contains its parameters and local vari-
ables.
• General-purpose registers that hold the data the program is currently
working with.
• A status register, or flag register, that contains information about the
current computation. For example, the flag register usually contains a
bit that is set if the result of the previous operation was zero.
46 Chapter 7. Caching

When a program is running, the CPU executes the following steps, called
the instruction cycle:

• Fetch: The next instruction is fetched from memory and stored in the
instruction register.

• Decode: Part of the CPU, called the control unit, decodes the instruc-
tion and send signals to the other parts of the CPU.

• Execute: Signals from the control unit cause the appropriate compu-
tation to occur.

Most computers can execute a few hundred different instructions, called the
instruction set. But most instructions fall into a few general categories:

• Load: Transfers a value from memory to a register.

• Arithmetic/logic: Loads operands from registers, performs a mathe-

matical operation, and stores the result in a register.

• Store: Transfers a value from a register to memory.

• Jump/branch: Changes the program counter, causing the flow of exe-

cution to jump to another location in the program. Branches are usu-
ally conditional, which means that they check a flag in the flag register
and jump only if it is set.

Some instructions sets, including the ubiquitous x86, provide instructions

that combine a load and an arithmetic operation.

During each instruction cycle, one instruction is read from the program text.
In addition, about half of the instructions in a typical program load or store
data. And therein lies one of the fundamental problems of computer archi-
tecture: the memory bottleneck.

In current desktop computers, a typical CPU runs at 2 GHz, which means

that it initiates a new instruction every 0.5 ns. But the time it takes to transfer
data to and from memory is about 10 ns. If the CPU has to wait 10 ns to fetch
the next instruction, and another 10 ns to load data, it would take 40 clock
cycles to complete one instruction.
7.1. Cache performance 47

7.1 Cache performance

The solution to this problem, or at least a partial solution, is caching. A
cache is a small, fast memory on the same chip as the CPU. In current com-
puters, a cache might be 1–2 MiB, and the access time might be 1–2 ns.

When the CPU loads a value from memory, it stores a copy in the cache. If
the same value is loaded again, the CPU gets the cached copy and doesn’t
have to wait for memory.

Eventually the cache gets full. Then, in order to bring something new in,
we have to kick something out. So if the CPU loads a value and then loads
it again much later, it might not be in cache any more.

The performance of many programs is limited by the effectiveness of the

cache. If the data the CPU needs is usually in cache, the program can run
at the full speed of the CPU. If the CPU frequently needs data that is not in
cache, the program is limited by the speed of memory.

The cache hit rate, h, is the fraction of memory accesses that find data in
cache; the miss rate, m, is the fraction of memory accesses that have to go
to memory. If the time to process a cache hit is Th and the time for a cache
miss is Tm , the average time for each memory access is

hTh + mTm

Equivalently, we could define the miss penalty as the extra time to process
a cache miss, Tp = Tm − Th . Then the average access time is

Th + mTp

When the miss rate is low, the average access time can be close to Th . That
is, the program can perform as if memory ran at cache speeds.

7.2 Locality
When a program reads a byte for the first time, the cache usually loads
a block or line of data that includes the requested byte and some of its
neighbors. If the program goes on to read one of the neighbors, it will find
it in cache.

As an example, suppose that the block size is 64 B. And suppose you read
a string with length 64, and the first byte of the string happens to fall at
48 Chapter 7. Caching

the beginning of a block. When you load the first byte, you would incur a
miss penalty, but after that the rest of the string would be in cache. After
reading the whole string, the hit rate would be 63/64. If the string spans
two blocks, you would incur 2 miss penalties. But even then the hit rate
would be 62/64, or almost 97%.
On the other hand, if the program jumps around unpredictably, reading
data from scattered locations in memory, and seldom accessing the same
location twice, cache performance would be poor.
The tendency of a program to use the same data more than once is called
temporal locality. The tendency to use data in nearby locations is called
spatial locality. Fortunately, many programs naturally display both kinds
of locality:

• Most programs contain blocks of code with no jumps or branches.

Within these blocks, instructions run sequentially, so the access pat-
tern has spatial locality.

• In a loop, programs execute the same instructions many times, so the

access pattern has temporal locality.

• The result of one instruction is often used immediately as an operand

of the next instruction, so the data access pattern has temporal locality.

• When a program executes a function, its parameters and local vari-

ables are stored together on the stack; accessing these values has spa-
tial locality.

• One of the most common processing patterns is to read or write the

elements of an array sequentially; this pattern also has spatial locality.

The next section explores the relationship between a program’s access pat-
tern and cache performance.

7.3 Measuring cache performance

When I was a graduate student at U.C. Berkeley I was a teaching assistant
for Computer Architecture with Brian Harvey. One of my favorite exercises
involved a program that iterates through an array and measures the aver-
age time to read and write an element. By varying the size of the array,
it is possible to infer the size of the cache, the block size, and some other
attributes.
7.3. Measuring cache performance 49

You can download my modified version of this program from TBA.

The kernel of the program is this loop:

iters = 0;
do {
sec0 = get_seconds();

for (index = 0; index < limit; index += stride)

array[index] = array[index] + 1;

iters = iters + 1;
sec = sec + (get_seconds() - sec0);

} while (sec < 0.1);

The inner for loop traverses the array. limit determines how much of the
array it traverses; stride determines how many elements it skips over. For
example, if limit is 16 and stride is 4, the loop would increment elements
0, 4, 8, and 12.

sec keeps track of the total CPU time used by the inner loop. The outer
loop runs until sec exceeds 0.1 seconds, which is long enough that we can
compute the average time with sufficient precision.

get_seconds uses the system call clock_gettime, converts to seconds, and

returns the result as a double:

double get_seconds(){
struct timespec ts;
clock_gettime(CLOCK_PROCESS_CPUTIME_ID, &ts);
return ts.tv_sec + ts.tv_nsec / 1e9;
}

To isolate the time to access the elements of the array, the program runs a
second loop that is almost identical except that the inner loop doesn’t touch
the array; it always increments the same variable:

iters2 = 0;
do {
sec0 = get_seconds();

for (index = 0; index < limit; index += stride)

50 Chapter 7. Caching

10
512 B
256 B
8 128 B
64 B
32 B
16 B

average penalty (ns)

6 8B

012
2 214 216 218 220 222 224 226
size (B)

Figure 7.1: Average miss penalty as a function of array size and stride.

temp = temp + index;

iters2 = iters2 + 1;
sec = sec - (get_seconds() - sec0);

} while (iters2 < iters);

The second loop runs the same number of iterations as the first. After each
iteration, it subtracts the elapsed time from sec. When the loop completes,
sec contains the total time for all array accesses, minus the total time it took
to increment temp. This difference is the total miss penalty incurred by all
accesses. Finally, we divide by the number of accesses to get the average
miss penalty per access, in ns:

sec * 1e9 / iters / limit * stride

If you compile and run cache.c you should see output like this:

Size: 4096 Stride: 8 read+write: 0.8633 ns

Size: 4096 Stride: 16 read+write: 0.7023 ns
Size: 4096 Stride: 32 read+write: 0.7105 ns
Size: 4096 Stride: 64 read+write: 0.7058 ns
If you have Python and matplotlib installed, you can use
graph_cache_data.py to graph the results. Figure 7.1 shows the re-
sults when I ran it on a Dell Optiplex 7010. Notice that the array size and
stride are reported in bytes, not number of array elements.
Take a minute to consider this graph, and see what you can infer about the
cache. Here are some things to think about:
7.4. Programming for cache performance 51

• The program reads through the array many times, so it has plenty
of temporal locality. If the entire array fits in cache, we expect the
average miss penalty to be near 0.

• When the stride is 4 bytes, we read every element of the array, so the
program has plenty of spatial locality. If the block size is big enough
to contain 64 elements, for example, the hit rate would be 63/64, even
if the array does not fit in cache.

• If the stride is equal to the block size (or greater), the spatial locality
is effectively zero, because each time we read a block, we only access
one element. In that case we expect to see the maximum miss penalty.

In summary, we expect good cache performance if the array is smaller than

the cache size or if the stride is smaller than the block size. Performance
only degrades if the array is bigger than the cache and the stride is large.

In Figure 7.1, cache performance is good, for all strides, as long as the array
is less than 222 B. We can infer that the cache size is near 4 MiB; in fact,
according to the specs, it is 3 MiB.

When the stride is 8, 16, or 32 B, cache performance is good. At 64 B it starts

to degrade, and for larger block sizes the average miss penalty is about 9 ns.
We can infer that the block size is 128 B.

Many processors use multi-level caches that include a small, fast cache and
a bigger, slower cache. In this example, it looks like the miss penalty in-
creases a little when the array size is bigger than 214 B, so it’s possible that
this processor also has a 16 KB cache with an access time less than 1 ns.

7.4 Programming for cache performance

Memory caching is implemented in hardware, so most of the time program-
mers don’t need to know much about it. But if you know how caches work,
you can write programs that use them more effectively.

For example, if you are working with a large array, it might be faster to
traverse the array once, performing several operations with each element,
rather than traversing the array several times.

If you are working with a 2-D array, it might be stored as an array of rows. If
you traverse through the elements, it would be faster to go row-wise, so the
52 Chapter 7. Caching

effective stride is 1 element, rather than column-wise, with a stride equal to

the row length.
Linked data structures don’t always exhibit spatial locality, because the
nodes aren’t necessarily contiguous in memory. But you allocate many
nodes at the same time, they are usually co-located in the heap. Or, even
better, if you allocate an array of nodes all at once, you know they will be
contiguous.
Recursive strategies like mergesort often have good cache behavior because
they break big arrays into smaller pieces and then work with the pieces.
Sometimes these algorithms can be tuned to take advantage of cache be-
havior.
In extreme cases where performance is very important, it is possible to de-
sign algorithms that depend on the size of the cache, the block size, and
other hardware characterstics. Algorithms like that are called cache-aware.
The obvious drawback of cache-aware algorithms is that they are hardware-
specific.

7.5 The memory hierarchy

At some point during this chapter, a question like the following might have
occurred to you: “If caches are so much faster than main memory, why not
make a really big cache and forget about memory?”
Without going too far into computer architecture, there are two reasons:
electronics and economics. Caches are fast because they are small and close
to the CPU, which minimizes delays due to capacitance and signal propa-
gation. If you make a cache big, it will be slower.
Also, caches take up space on the processor chip, and bigger chips are
more expensive. Main memory is usually dynamic random-access memory
(DRAM), which uses only one transistor and one capacitor per bit, so it is
possible to pack more memory into the same amount of space. But this way
of implementing memory is slower than the way caches are implemented.
Also main memory is usally packaged in a dual in-line memory module
(DIMM) that includes 16 or more chips. Several small chips are cheaper
than one big one.
The tradeoff between speed, size, and cost is the fundamental reason for
caching. If there were one memory technology that was fast, big, and cheap,
we wouldn’t need anything else.
7.6. Caching policy 53

The same principle applies to storage as well as memory. Flash drives

are fast, but they are more expensive than hard drives, so they tend to be
smaller. Tape drives are even slower than hard drives, but they can store
very large amounts of data relatively cheaply.
The following table shows the access time, typical size, and cost for each of
these technologies:

Device Access Typical Cost

time size
Register 0.5 ns 256 B ?
Cache 1 ns 2 MiB ?
DRAM 10 ns 4 GiB $10 / GiB
SSD 10 µs 100 GiB $1 / GiB
HDD 5 ms 500 GiB $0.25 / GiB
Tape minutes 1–2 TiB $0.02 / GiB

The number and size of registers depends on details of the architecture.

Current computers have about 32 general-purpose registers, each storing
one word. On a 32-bit computer, a word is 32 bits or 4 B. On a 64-bit com-
puter, a word is 64 bits or 8 B. So the total size of the register file is 100–300
B.
The cost of registers and caches is hard to quantify. They contribute to the
cost of the chips they are on, but consumers don’t see that cost directly.
For the other numbers in the table, I looked at the specifications for typical
hardware for sale from online computer hardware stores. By the time you
read this, these numbers will be obsolete, but they give you an idea of what
the performance and cost gaps look like at one point in time.
These technologies make up the memory hierarchy (note that this use of
“memory” also includes storage). Each level of the hierarchy is bigger and
slower than the one above it. And in some sense, each level acts as a cache
for the one below it. You can think of main memory as a cache for programs
and data that are stored permanently on SSDs and HHDs. And if you are
working with very large datasets stored on tape, you could use hard drives
to cache one subset of the data at a time.

7.6 Caching policy

The memory hierarchy suggests a framework for thinking about caching.
At every level of the hierarchy, we have to address four fundamental ques-
54 Chapter 7. Caching

tions of caching:

• Who moves data up and down the hierarchy? In enterprise systems,

administrators move data explicitly between disk and tape. Users im-
plicitly move data from disk to memory when they execute programs
and open files. Hardware on the CPU handles the memory cache. And
register allocation is usually done by the compiler.

• What gets moved? In general, block sizes are small at the top of the
hierarchy, and bigger at the bottom. In a memory cache, a typical block
size is 128 B. Pages in memory might be 4 KiB, but when the operating
system reads a file from disk, it might read 10 or 100 blocks at a time.

• When does data get moved? In the most basic cache, data gets moved
into cache when it is used for the first time. But many caches use some
kind of prefetching, meaning that data is loaded before it is explicitly
requested. We have already seen a simple form of preloading: loading
an entire block when only part of it is requested.

• Where in the cache does the data go? When the cache is full, we can’t
bring anything in without kicking something out. Ideally, we want to
keep data that will be used again soon and replace data that will not
be used again.

The answers to these questions make up the cache policy. Near the top of
the hierarchy, cache policies tend to be simple because they have to be fast
and they are implemented in hardware. Near the bottom of the hierarchy,
there is more time to make decisions, and well-designed policies can make
a big difference.

Most cache policies are based on the principle that history repeats itself;
if we have information about the recent past, we can use it to predict the
immediate future. For example, if a block of data has been used recently,
we expect it to be used again soon. This principle suggests a replacement
policy called “least recently used,” or LRU, which removes from the cache
a block of data that has not been used recently. For more on this topic, see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cache_algorithms.
Chapter 8

Multitasking

In many current systems, the CPU contains multiple cores, which means it
can run several processes at the same time. In addition, each core is capable
of multitasking, which means it can switch from one process to another
quickly, creating the illusion that many processes are running at the same
time.

The part of the operating system that implements multitasking is the kernel.
In a nut or seed, the kernel is the innermost part, surrounded by a shell. In
an operating system, the kernel is the lowest level of software, surrounded
by several other layers, including an interface called a “shell.” Computer
scientists love extended metaphors.

It’s hard to specify which parts of the operating system should be in the
kernel. But at its most basic, the kernel’s job is to handle interrupts. An
interrupt is an event that stops the normal instruction cycle and causes the
flow of execution to jump to a special section of code called an interrupt
handler.

A hardware interrupt is caused when a device sends a signal to the CPU.

For example, a network interface might cause an interrupt when a packet of
data arrives, or a disk drive might cause an interrupt when a data transfer
is complete. Most systems also have timers that cause interrupts at regular
intervals.

A software interrupt is caused by a running program. For example, if an

instruction cannot complete for some reason, it might trigger an interrupt
so the condition can be handled by the operating system. Some floating-
point errors, like division by zero, can be handled using interrupts.
56 Chapter 8. Multitasking

When a program needs to access a hardware device, it makes a system call,

which is similar to a function call, except that instead of jumping to the
beginning of the function, it executes a special instruction that triggers an
interrupt, causing the flow of execution to jump to the kernel. The kernel
reads the parameters of the system call, performs the requested operation,
and then resumes the interrupted process.

8.1 Hardware state

Handling interrupts requires cooperation between hardware and software.
When an interrupt occurs, there might be several instructions running on
the CPU and data stored in registers.
Usually the hardware is responsible for bringing the CPU to a consistent
state; for example, every instruction should either complete or behave as
if it never started. No instruction should be left half complete. Also, the
hardware is responsible for saving the program counter (PC), so the kernel
knows where to resume.
Then, usually, it is the responsibility of the interrupt handler to save the
contents of the registers. In order to do its job, the kernel needs to exe-
cute instructions, which modify data registers and the flag register. So this
hardware state needs to be saved before it gets modified, and then restored
before the interrupted process resumes.
Here is an outline of this sequence of events:

1. When the interrupt occurs, the hardware saves the program counter
in a special register and jumps to the appropriate interrupt handler.
2. The interrupt handler stores the program counter and the flag register
in memory, along with the contents of any data registers it plans to
use.
3. The interrupt handler runs whatever code is needed to handle the in-
terrupt.
4. Then it restores the contents of the saved registers. Finally, it restores
the program counter of the interrupted process, which has the effect
of jumping back to the interrupted instruction.

If this mechanism works correctly, there is generally no way for the inter-
rupted process to know there was an interruption, unless it detects small
changes in the time between instructions.
8.2. Context switching 57

8.2 Context switching

Interrupt handlers can be fast because they don’t have to save the entire
hardware state; they only have to save registers they are planning to use.
But when an interrupt occurs, the kernel does not always resume the in-
terrupted process. It has the option of switching to another process. This
mechanism is called a context switch.
In general, the kernel does not know which registers a process will use, so
it has to save all of them. Also, when it switches to a new process, it might
have to clear data stored in the memory management unit (see Section ??).
And after the context switch, it might take some time for the new process to
load data into the cache. For these reasons, context switches are relatively
slow, on the order of thousands of cycles, or a few microseconds.
In a multi-tasking system, each process is allowed to run for a short period
of time called a time slice or quantum. During a context switch, the kernel
sets a hardware timer that causes an interrupt at the end of the time slice.
When the interrupt occurs, the kernel can switch to another process or allow
the interrupted process to resume. The part of the operating system that
makes this decision is the scheduler.

8.3 The process life cycle

When a process is created, the operating system allocates a data structure
that contains information about the process, called a process control block
or PCB. Among other things, the PCB keeps track of the process state, which
is one of:

• Running, if the process is currently running on a core.

• Ready, if the process could be running, but isn’t, usually because there
are more runnable processes than cores.

• Blocked, if the process cannot run because it is waiting for a future

event like network communication or a disk read.

• Done, if the process has completed, but has exit status information
that has not been read yet.

Here are the events that cause a process to transition from one state to an-
other:
58 Chapter 8. Multitasking

• A process is created when the running program executes a system call

like fork. At the end of the system call, the new process is usually
ready. Then the scheduler might resume the original process (the “par-
ent”) or start the new process (the “child”).

• When a process is started or resumed by the scheduler, its state

changes from ready to running.

• When a process is interrupted and the schedule chooses not to let it

resume, its state changes from running to ready.

• If a process executes a system call that cannot complete immediately,

like a disk request, it becomes blocked and the scheduler chooses an-
other process.

• When an operation like a disk request completes, it causes an inter-

rupt. The interrupt handler figures out which process was waiting for
the request and switches its state from blocked to ready.

• When a process calls exit, the interrupt handler stores the exit code
in the PCB and changes the process’s state to done.

8.4 Scheduling
As we saw in Section 2.3 there might be hundreds of processes on a com-
puter, but usually most of them are blocked. Most of the time, there are
only a few processes that are ready or running. When an interrupt occurs,
the scheduler decides which process to start or resume.
On a workstation or laptop, the primary goal of the scheduler is to minimize
response time; that is, the computer should respond quickly to user actions.
Response time is also important on a server, but in addition the scheduler
might try to maximize throughput, which is the number of requests that
complete per unit of time.
Usually the scheduler doesn’t have much information about what processes
are doing, so its decisions are based on a few heuristics:

• Processes might be limited by different resources. A process that does

a lot of computation is probably CPU-bound, which means that its run
time depends on how much CPU time it gets. A process that reads
data from a network or disk might be I/O-bound, which means that
it would run faster if data input and output went faster, but would
8.4. Scheduling 59

not run faster with more CPU time. Finally, a process that interacts
with the user is probably blocked, most of the time, waiting for user
actions.
The operating system can sometimes classify processes based on their
past behavior, and schedule them accordingly. For example, when an
interactive process is unblocked, it should probably run immediately,
because a user is probably waiting for a reply. On the other hand, a
CPU-bound process that has been running for a long time might be
less time-sensitive.

• If a process is likely to run for a short time and then make a blocking
request, it should probably run immediately, for two reasons: (1) if
the request takes some time to complete, we should start it as soon as
possible, and (2) it is better for a long-running process to wait for a
short one, rather than the other way around.
As an analogy, suppose you are making an apple pie. The crust takes
5 minutes to prepare, but then it has to chill for half an hour. It takes
20 minutes to prepare the filling. If you prepare the crust first, you can
prepare the filling while the crust is chilling, and you can finish the
pie in 35 minutes. If you prepare the filling first, the process takes 55
minutes.

Most schedulers use some form of priority-based scheduling, where each

process has a priority that can be adjusted up or down over time. When the
scheduler runs, it chooses the runnable process with the highest priority.

Here are some of the factors that determine a process’s priority:

• A process usually starts with a relatively high priority so it starts run-

ning quickly.

• If a process makes a request and blocks before its time slice is com-
plete, it is more likely to be interactive or I/O-bound, so its priority
should go up.

• If a process runs for an entire time slice, it is more likely to be long-

running and CPU-bound, so its priority should go down.

• If a task blocks for a long time and then becomes ready, it should get
a priority boost so it can respond to whatever it was waiting for.

• If process A is blocked waiting for process B, for example if they are

connected by a pipe, the priority of process B should go up.
60 Chapter 8. Multitasking

• The system call nice allows a process to decrease (but not increase)
its own priority, allowing programmers to pass explicit information to
the scheduler.

For most systems running normal workloads, scheduling algorithms don’t

have a substantial effect on performance. Simple scheduling policies are
usually good enough.

8.5 Real-time scheduling

However, for programs that interact with the real world, scheduling can be
very important. For example, a program that reads data from sensors and
controls motors might have to complete recurring tasks at some minimum
frequency and react to external events with some maximum response time.
These requirements are often expressed in terms of tasks that must be com-
pleted before deadlines.

Scheduling tasks to meet deadlines is called real-time scheduling. For some

applications, a general-purpose operating system like Linux can be modi-
fied to handle real-time scheduling. These modifications might include:

• Providing richer APIs for controlling task priorities.

• Modifying the scheduler to guarantee that the process with highest

priority runs within a fixed amount of time.

• Reorganizing interrupt handlers to guarantee a maximum completion

time.

• Modifying locks and other synchronization mechanisms to allow a

high-priority task to preempt a lower-priority task.

• Choosing an implementation of dynamic memory allocation that

guarantees a maximum completion time.

For more demanding applications, especially in domains where real-time

response is a matter of life and death, real-time operating systems provide
specialized capabilities, often with much simpler designs than general pur-
pose operating systems.
Chapter 9

Cleaning up POSIX threads

In this section, I present some utility code I use to make multithreading in

C a little more pleasant. The examples in Section 10 are based on this code.
Probably the most popular threading standard used with C is POSIX
Threads, or Pthreads for short. The POSIX standard defines a thread model
and an interface for creating and controlling threads. Most versions of
UNIX provide an implementation of Pthreads.

9.1 Compiling Pthread code

Using Pthreads is like using most C libraries:

• You include headers files at the beginning of your program.

• You write code that calls functions defined by Pthreads.

• When you compile the program, you link it with the Pthread library.

For my examples, I include the following headers:

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <pthread.h>
#include <semaphore.h>

The first two are standard; the third is for Pthreads and the fourth is for
semaphores. To compile with the Pthread library in gcc, you can use the -l
option on the command line:
62 Chapter 9. Cleaning up POSIX threads

gcc -g -O2 -o array array.c -lpthread

This compiles array.c with debugging info and optimization, links with
the Pthread library, and generates an executable named array.

If you are used to a language like Python that provides exception handling,
you will probably be annoyed with languages like C that require you to
check for error conditions explicitly. I often mitigate this hassle by wrapping
library function calls together with their error-checking code inside my own
functions. For example, here is a version of malloc that checks the return
value.

void *check_malloc(int size)

{
void *p = malloc (size);
if (p == NULL) {
perror ("malloc failed");
exit (-1);
}
return p;
}

9.2 Creating threads

I’ve done the same thing with the Pthread functions I’m going to use; here’s
my wrapper for pthread_create.

pthread_t make_thread(void *(*entry)(void *), Shared *shared)

{
int n;
pthread_t thread;

n = pthread_create (&thread, NULL, entry, (void *)shared);

if (n != 0) {
perror ("pthread_create failed");
exit (-1);
}
return thread;
}
9.2. Creating threads 63

The return type from pthread_create is pthread_t, which you can think of
as a handle for the new thread. You shouldn’t have to worry about the im-
plementation of pthread_t, but you do have to know that it has the seman-
tics of a primitive type1 . You can think of a thread handle as an immutable
value, so you can copy it or pass it by value without causing problems. I
point this out now because it is not true for semaphores, which I will get to
in a minute.

If pthread_create succeeds, it returns 0 and my function returns the handle

of the new thread. If an error occurs, pthread_create returns an error code
and my function prints an error message and exits.

The parameters of pthread_create take some explaining. Starting with the

second, Shared is a user-defined structure that contains shared variables.
The following typedef statement creates the new type:

typedef struct {
int counter;
} Shared;

In this case, the only shared variable is counter. make_shared allocates

space for a Shared structure and initializes the contents:

Shared *make_shared ()
{
int i;
Shared *shared = check_malloc (sizeof (Shared));
shared->counter = 0;
return shared;
}

Now that we have a shared data structure, let’s get back to pthread_create.
The first parameter is a pointer to a function that takes a void pointer and
returns a void pointer. If the syntax for declaring this type makes your
eyes bleed, you are not alone. Anyway, the purpose of this parameter is to
specify the function where the execution of the new thread will begin. By
convention, this function is named entry:

void *entry (void *arg)

{
1 Like an integer, for example, which is what a pthread_t is in all the implementations I
know.
64 Chapter 9. Cleaning up POSIX threads

Shared *shared = (Shared *) arg;

child_code (shared);
pthread_exit (NULL);
}

The parameter of entry has to be declared as a void pointer, but in this

program we know that it is really a pointer to a Shared structure, so we can
typecast it accordingly and then pass it along to child_code, which does
the real work.

When child_code returns, we invoke pthread_exit which can be used to

pass a value to any thread (usually the parent) that joins with this thread.
In this case, the child has nothing to say, so we pass NULL.

9.3 Joining threads

When one thread wants to wait for another thread to complete, it invokes
pthread_join. Here is my wrapper for pthread_join:

void join_thread (pthread_t thread)

{
int ret = pthread_join (thread, NULL);
if (ret == -1) {
perror ("pthread_join failed");
exit (-1);
}
}

The parameter is the handle of the thread you want to wait for. All my
function does is call pthread_join and check the result.

9.4 Semaphores
The POSIX standard specifies an interface for semaphores. This inter-
face is not part of Pthreads, but most UNIXes that implement Pthreads
also provide semaphores. If you find yourself with Pthreads and without
semaphores, you can make your own; see Section 10.2.

POSIX semaphores have type sem_t. You shouldn’t have to know about the
implementation of this type, but you do have to know that it has structure
9.4. Semaphores 65

semantics, which means that if you assign it to a variable you are making a
copy of the contents of a structure. Copying a semaphore is almost certainly
a bad idea. In POSIX, the behavior of the copy is undefined.
In my programs, I use capital letters to denote types with structure seman-
tics, and I always manipulate them with pointers. Fortunately, it is easy to
put a wrapper around sem_t to make it behave like a proper object. Here is
the typedef and the wrapper that creates and initializes semaphores:

typedef sem_t Semaphore;

Semaphore *make_semaphore (int n)

{
Semaphore *sem = check_malloc (sizeof(Semaphore));
int ret = sem_init(sem, 0, n);
if (ret == -1) {
perror ("sem_init failed");
exit (-1);
}
return sem;
}
make_semaphore takes the initial value of the semaphore as a parameter.
It allocates space for a Semaphore, initializes it, and returns a pointer to
Semaphore.
sem_init uses old-style UNIX error reporting, which means that it returns
−1 if something went wrong. One nice thing about these wrapper functions
is that we don’t have to remember which functions use which reporting
style.
With these definitions, we can write C code that almost looks like a real
programming language:

Semaphore *mutex = make_semaphore(1);

sem_wait(mutex);
sem_post(mutex);
Annoyingly, POSIX semaphores use post instead of signal, but we can fix
that:

int sem_signal(Semaphore *sem)

{
return sem_post(sem);
}
66 Chapter 9. Cleaning up POSIX threads

That’s enough cleanup for now.

Chapter 10

Synchronization in C

10.1 Mutual exclusion

In this section we will write a multithreaded, synchronized program in C.
We’ll start by defining a structure that contains shared variables:

typedef struct {
int counter;
int end;
int *array;
} Shared;

Shared *make_shared (int end)

{
int i;
Shared *shared = check_malloc (sizeof (Shared));

shared->counter = 0;
shared->end = end;

shared->array = check_malloc (shared->end * sizeof(int));

for (i=0; i<shared->end; i++) {
shared->array[i] = 0;
}
return shared;
}
counter is a shared variable that will be incremented by concurrent threads
until it reaches end. We will use array to check for synchronization errors
68 Chapter 10. Synchronization in C

by keeping track of the value of counter after each increment.

10.1.1 Parent code

Here is the code the parent thread uses to create threads and wait for them
to complete:

int main ()
{
int i;
pthread_t child[NUM_CHILDREN];

Shared *shared = make_shared (100000);

for (i=0; i<NUM_CHILDREN; i++) {

child[i] = make_thread (entry, shared);
}

for (i=0; i<NUM_CHILDREN; i++) {

join_thread (child[i]);
}

check_array (shared);
return 0;
}

The first loop creates the child threads; the second loop waits for them to
complete. When the last child has finished, the parent invokes check_array
to check for errors. make_thread and join_thread are defined in Ap-
pendix 9.

10.1.2 Child code

Here is the code that is executed by each of the children:

void child_code (Shared *shared)

{
while (1) {
if (shared->counter >= shared->end) {
return;
10.1. Mutual exclusion 69

}
shared->array[shared->counter]++;
shared->counter++;
}
}

Each time through the loop, the child threads use counter as an index
into array and increment the corresponding element. Then they increment
counter and check to see if they’re done.

10.1.3 Synchronization errors

If everything works correctly, each element of the array should be incre-
mented once. So to check for errors, we can just count the number of ele-
ments that are not 1:

void check_array (Shared *shared)

{
int i, errors=0;

for (i=0; i<shared->end; i++) {

if (shared->array[i] != 1) errors++;
}
printf ("%d errors.\n", errors);
}

You can download this program (including the cleanup code) from
greenteapress.com/semaphores/counter.c
If you compile and run the program, you should see output like this:
Starting child at counter 0
10000
20000
30000
40000
50000
60000
70000
80000
90000
Child done.
70 Chapter 10. Synchronization in C

Starting child at counter 100000

Child done.
Checking...
0 errors.
Of course, the interaction of the children depends on details of your oper-
ating system and also other programs running on your computer. In the
example shown here, one thread ran all the way from 0 to end before the
other thread got started, so it is not surprising that there were no synchro-
nization errors.

But as end gets bigger, there are more context switches between the children.
On my system I start to see errors when end is 100,000,000.

Puzzle: use semaphores to enforce exclusive access to the shared variables

and run the program again to confirm that there are no errors.
10.1. Mutual exclusion 71

10.1.4 Mutual exclusion hint

Here is the version of Shared I used in my solution:

typedef struct {
int counter;
int end;
int *array;
Semaphore *mutex; (*\label{declaremutex}*)
} Shared;

Shared *make_shared (int end)

{
int i;
Shared *shared = check_malloc (sizeof (Shared));

shared->counter = 0;
shared->end = end;

shared->array = check_malloc (shared->end * sizeof(int));

for (i=0; i<shared->end; i++) {
shared->array[i] = 0;
}
shared->mutex = make_semaphore(1); (*\label{initmutex}*)
return shared;
}

Line ?? declares mutex as a Semaphore; Line ?? initializes the mutex with

the value 1.
72 Chapter 10. Synchronization in C
10.1. Mutual exclusion 73

10.1.5 Mutual exclusion solution

Here is the synchronized version of the child code:

void child_code (Shared *shared)

{
while (1) {
sem_wait(shared->mutex);
if (shared->counter >= shared->end) {
sem_signal(shared->mutex);
return;
}

shared->array[shared->counter]++;
shared->counter++;
sem_signal(shared->mutex);
}
}

There is nothing too surprising here; the only tricky thing is to remember to
release the mutex before the return statement.

You can download this solution from greenteapress.com/semaphores/

counter_mutex.c
74 Chapter 10. Synchronization in C
10.2. Make your own semaphores 75

10.2 Make your own semaphores

The most commonly used synchronization tools for programs that use
Pthreads are mutexes and condition variables, not semaphores. For an ex-
planation of these tools, I recommend Butenhof’s Programming with POSIX
Threads [?].

Puzzle: read about mutexes and condition variables, and then use them to
write an implementation of semaphores.

You might want to use the following utility code in your solutions. Here is
my wrapper for Pthreads mutexes:

typedef pthread_mutex_t Mutex;

Mutex *make_mutex ()
{
Mutex *mutex = check_malloc (sizeof(Mutex));
int n = pthread_mutex_init (mutex, NULL);
if (n != 0) perror_exit ("make_lock failed");
return mutex;
}

void mutex_lock (Mutex *mutex)

{
int n = pthread_mutex_lock (mutex);
if (n != 0) perror_exit ("lock failed");
}

void mutex_unlock (Mutex *mutex)

{
int n = pthread_mutex_unlock (mutex);
if (n != 0) perror_exit ("unlock failed");
}
76 Chapter 10. Synchronization in C

And my wrapper for Pthread condition variables:

typedef pthread_cond_t Cond;

Cond *make_cond ()
{
Cond *cond = check_malloc (sizeof(Cond));
int n = pthread_cond_init (cond, NULL);
if (n != 0) perror_exit ("make_cond failed");
return cond;
}

void cond_wait (Cond *cond, Mutex *mutex)

{
int n = pthread_cond_wait (cond, mutex);
if (n != 0) perror_exit ("cond_wait failed");
}

void cond_signal (Cond *cond)

{
int n = pthread_cond_signal (cond);
if (n != 0) perror_exit ("cond_signal failed");
}
10.2. Make your own semaphores 77

10.2.1 Semaphore implementation hint

Here is the structure definition I used for my semaphores:

typedef struct {
int value, wakeups;
Mutex *mutex;
Cond *cond;
} Semaphore;

value is the value of the semaphore. wakeups counts the number of pending
signals; that is, the number of threads that have been woken but have not
yet resumed execution. The reason for wakeups is to make sure that our
semaphores have Property 3, described in Section ??.

mutex provides exclusive access to value and wakeups; cond is the condition
variable threads wait on if they wait on the semaphore.

Here is the initialization code for this structure:

Semaphore *make_semaphore (int value)

{
Semaphore *semaphore = check_malloc (sizeof(Semaphore));
semaphore->value = value;
semaphore->wakeups = 0;
semaphore->mutex = make_mutex ();
semaphore->cond = make_cond ();
return semaphore;
}
78 Chapter 10. Synchronization in C
10.2. Make your own semaphores 79

10.2.2 Semaphore implementation

Here is my implementation of semaphores using Pthread’s mutexes and
condition variables:

void sem_wait (Semaphore *semaphore)

{
mutex_lock (semaphore->mutex);
semaphore->value--;

if (semaphore->value < 0) {
do {
cond_wait (semaphore->cond, semaphore->mutex);
} while (semaphore->wakeups < 1);
semaphore->wakeups--;
}
mutex_unlock (semaphore->mutex);
}

void sem_signal (Semaphore *semaphore)

{
mutex_lock (semaphore->mutex);
semaphore->value++;

if (semaphore->value <= 0) {
semaphore->wakeups++;
cond_signal (semaphore->cond);
}
mutex_unlock (semaphore->mutex);
}

Most of this is straightforward; the only thing that might be tricky is the
do...while loop at Line ??. This is an unusual way to use a condition vari-
able, but in this case it is necessary.

Puzzle: why can’t we replace this do...while loop with a while loop?
80 Chapter 10. Synchronization in C
10.2. Make your own semaphores 81

10.2.3 Semaphore implementation detail

With a while loop, this implementation would not have Property 3. It
would be possible for a thread to signal and then run around and catch
its own signal.

With the do...while loop, it is guaranteed1 that when a thread signals, one
of the waiting threads will get the signal, even if another thread gets the
mutex at Line ?? before one of the waiting threads resumes.

1 Well,almost. It turns out that a well-timed spurious wakeup (see http://en.

wikipedia.org/wiki/Spurious_wakeup) can violate this guarantee.