Chapter 3: Processes

NARZU TARANNUM(NTR)
DEPT. OF CSE, BRAC UNIVERSITY
 Chapter 3: Processes

● Process Concept
● Process Scheduling
● Operation on Processes
● Interprocess Communication

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 Process Concept

● An operating system executes a variety of programs

● Textbook uses the terms job and process almost interchangeably

● Process – a program in execution; process execution must

progress in sequential fashion.
● A process includes:
● program counter
● stack
● data section

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 Multiple parts of a process

● The program code, also called ● Process in Memory

text section
● Current activity including
program counter, processor
registers
● Stack containing temporary data,
function parameters, return
addresses, local variables, etc.
● Data section containing global
variables
● Heap containing memory
dynamically allocated during run
time

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 Process Memory Map
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdio.h>
Int calls;
Void fact(int a, int *b)
{
calls++;
if (a==1) return;
*b = *b *a;
fact(a-1,b);
}
Int main()
{
int n, *m;
scanf(“%d”, &n);
m = malloc(sizeof(int));
*m = 1;
fact(n, m);
print(“Factorial (%d) is %d\n”,n,*m);
free (m);
}

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 Process Memory Map

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 Process Management
▪ A process is a program in execution. It is a unit of work within the system.
Program is a passive entity stored on disk (executable file), process is an
active entity.
▪ Process needs resources to accomplish its task
▪ CPU, memory, I/O, files
▪ Initialization data
▪ Program becomes process when executable file loaded into memory.
▪ One program can be several processes
▪
Consider multiple users executing the same program
▪ Process termination requires reclaim of any reusable resources
▪ Processes maybe single-threaded or multi-threaded
▪ Process executes instructions sequentially, one at a time, until
completion
▪ Typically a system has many processes running concurrently on one or more
CPUs
▪ Concurrency by multiplexing the CPUs among the processes / threads

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 Process Control Block (PCB)

❑ Information associated with each process is represented in the Operating system is

Process Control Block(PCB).
❑ Process id/number
❑ Process state
❑ Program counter
❑ CPU registers
❑ CPU scheduling information/ Priority
❑ Memory-management information/ protection
❑ List of open files
❑ I/O status information

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 Process State

● As a process executes, it changes state.

● The state of a process is defined in part by the current
activity of that process.
● new: The process is being created
● ready: The process is waiting to be assigned to a
processor.
● running: Instructions are being executed
● waiting: The process is waiting for some event to
occur
● terminated: The process has finished execution

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 Diagram of Process State

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 Diagram of Process State

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 Process Scheduling Info

●Processes can be described as either:

● I/O-bound process – spends more time doing I/O than computations.
● CPU-bound process – spends more time doing computations.

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 Context Switch

● Context switching operations happen frequently on general purpose

system.
● When CPU switches to another process, the system must save the
state of the old process and load the saved state for the new process
● Context-switch time is overhead; the system does no useful work
while switching
● Context of a process represented in the PCB
● The more complex the OS and the PCB the longer the context
switch
● Time dependent on hardware support

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 CPU Switch From Process to Process

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 Process Scheduling

● The objective of Multi-programming is to have

some process running at all times, to maximize
CPU utilization.
● The objective of Time sharing is to switch the
CPU among processes so frequently that users
can interact with each program while it is
running.
● To meet these objectives, the process schedulers
select an available process for program
execution on CPU.

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 Schedulers
● Long-term scheduler (or job scheduler) – selects which processes should be brought into the
ready queue
● Long-term scheduler is invoked very infrequently (seconds, minutes) ⇒ (may be slow)
● The long-term scheduler controls the degree of multiprogramming
● Long-term scheduler strives for good process mix
● Short-term scheduler (or CPU scheduler) – selects which process should be executed next
and allocates CPU
● Short-term scheduler is invoked very frequently

Long Term Short Term

Job Scheduler Scheduler C
Ready
Queue P
Queue
U

● Reside in Secondary Memory ● Reside in Main Memory

● Keeps all the processes of the ● Keeps all the processes that are
system waiting to be executed.

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 Mid-term scheduler

● sometime it can be advantageous to remove process

from the memory and thus to reduce the degree of
multi-programming.
● Remove process from memory, store on disk, bring
back in from disk to continue execution: swapping

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 Process Scheduling Queues
● Process scheduler selects among available processes for next
execution CPU.
● Different queues are maintained for different state of the process.
● Processes migrate among the various queues
● Maintains scheduling queues of process:
● Job queue – set of all processes in the system
● Ready queue – set of all processes residing in main memory, ready and
waiting to execute
● Device queues – set of processes waiting for an I/O device

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 Process Scheduling Queues

Device 1

Device
Queue
C
Job Reay P
Queue Queue U
Device
Queue
● Reside in Secondary Memory ● Reside in Main Memory
● Keeps all the processes of the ● Keeps all the processes that are
Processes wait here
system waiting to be executed.
waiting for the device
to be free Device 2

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 Process Scheduling Queue/Queueing
diagram

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 Process scheduling as a queueing diagram

● A new process is initially put in the ready queue. It waits in the

ready queue until it is selected for execution and is given the CPU.
Once the process is allocated the CPU and is executing, one or
several events could occur.
● The process could issue an I/O request, and then be placed in an I/O
queue.
● The process could create a new sub process and waits for its
termination.
● The process could be removed forcibly from the CPU, as a result of
an interrupt, and be put back to ready queue.
● A process continue this cycle until it terminates.

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 Operation on process

The processes in the system can execute concurrently, and

must be created and deleted dynamically. OS must
provide a mechanism for process creation and
termination.

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 Process Creation

● A process may create several new processes via a create() process

system call during it’s execution.
● The creating process is called a parent process, and the new
processes are called the children of that process
● Each of the new processes may create other processes, forming a
tree of processes.
● When a process creates a new process, two possibilities exist in term of
execution:
● Parent and children execute concurrently
● Parent waits until some or all of its children have terminated.

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 Process Creation in UNIX
● System Call: offers the services of the operating system to the user programs.

● fork(): create a new process, which becomes the child process of the caller

● exec(): runs an executable file , replacing the previous executable

● wait(): suspends execution of the current process until one of its children terminates.

● Process creation for UNIX OS is shown in next slide:

Fig: Process creation using fork() system call

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 Process Creation

❑ Possibilities of the address

space of the new process:
● The child process is
duplicate of the parent
process.
● The child process has a
new program loaded into
it.

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 Process Creation in UNIX

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 Creating a process in UNIX using fork( )
system call

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 Process Termination

● A process terminates when it finishes executing its last

statement and asks the operating system to delete it using
the exit() system call.
● At that point the process may return a status
value(typically an integer) to its parent process(via the
wait() system call).
● All the resources of the process-including physical and
virtual memory, open files, and I/O buffers are
deallocated by the OS.

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 Process Termination

● Parent may terminate the execution of children

processes using the abort() system call for a verity
of reasons:
● Child has exceeded allocated resources.
● Task assigned to child is no longer required.
● The parent is exiting and the operating systems does
not allow a child to continue if its parent terminates.

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 Inter-process Communication
● Processes within a system may be independent or cooperating
processes can execute concurrently.
● Independent process cannot affect or be affected by the execution
of another process
● Cooperating process can affect or be affected by the execution of
another process ( any process that shared data with other process is
a cooperating process)

● Advantages or reason of cooperating process

4 Information sharing
4 Computation speed-up
4 Modularity
4 Convenience

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 Interprocess Communication

▪ Cooperating processes required interprocess communication

(IPC) mechanism that will allow them to exchange data and
information.
▪ IPC provides a mechanism to allow processes to communicate
and to synchronize there actions.
4 There are two fundamental models of IPC
– Shared memory
– Message passing

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 Interprocess Communication (IPC) Models

a) Message Passing b) Shared Memory

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 Shared-Memory

● Establish a region of shared memory for IIPC between processes.

● Other process that wish to communicate using this shared memory
segment must attach it to their address space.
● Read and write data in the shared area
● Processes responsible for synchronization
● Must ensure that same memory location is not being modified by
multiple processes at the same time.
● Shared memory requires that two or more processes agree to
remove this restriction.

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 Message-Passing systems

● In the message passing model, communication takes place by

means of messages exchanged between the cooperating processes
● Message passing provides a mechanism to allow processes to
communicate and to synchronize their actions without sharing the
same address space.
● IPC facility provides at least two operations in message passing
system:
● send(message) – message size fixed or variable
● receive(message)
● If P and Q wish to communicate, they need to:
● establish a communication link between them
● exchange messages via send/receive

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End of Chapter 3