2021-22 COMP3230A

 ILO 1 – [Fundamentals] discuss the characteristics of

different structures of the Operating Systems (such as
microkernel, layered, virtualization, etc.) and identify the
core functions of the Operating Systems.

Principles of Operating Systems 2

 Purpose and Functions of Operating Systems

 Core Services

 OS Architectures (Implementation design)

Principles of Operating Systems 3

 Required Readings
 Chapter 2, Introduction to Operating Systems, Operating
Systems: Three Easy Pieces by Arpaci-Dusseau et. al
 http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~remzi/OSTEP/intro.pdf

 Section 1.10 to 1.13 of Chapter 1 of Operating Systems, 3rd

edition by Deitel et. al
 http://www.deitel.com/books/os3e/os3e_01.pdf

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 What OSs have you ever used?

 What OSs have your heard about (but never used)?

 What OSs would be created or developed by you?

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 mid 1950s – mid 1960s (mainframe): Batch Systems
 1960s (minicomputer): Multiprogramming Systems --
UNIX born (Ken Thompson & Dennis Ritchie)
 1980s (PC):
 MS-DOS (1981), SunOS (1982), ULTRIX (1982), Macintosh (1984),
Windows 1.0 (1985), IBM AIX (1986), HP HP-UX (1986), Minix (1987),
SGI IRIX (1987), Windows 2.0 (1987), NeXTSTEP (1989)
 1990s (Internet):
 OS support for networking tasks became standard.
 Windows 3.0 (1990), 3.1 (1993), Linux (1991, Linus Torvalds), Solaris 2.0
(1992), FreeBSD (1993), NetBSD (1993), OS/2, Windows NT 3.1 (1993),
Windows 95, Windows NT 4.0 (1996), Windows 98.

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 2000s and beyond (Mobile)
 Mac OS X, Windows 2000, Windows Server 2003, Windows ME,
Windows XP (2001), Windows Vista (2005).
 Android: Nov. 5, 2007
 Mobile operating system based on the Linux kernel.
 iPhone OS (iOS): March 6, 2008
 For iPhone, iPad, iPod
 iOS 6: Sept 19, 2012
 iOS 8.4.1: Aug. 13, 2015 (800 MB)
 iOS 14.7.1 : July 26, 2021
 Microsoft Windows:
 Windows 7 : July 22, 2009, NT kernel
 Windows 8: Oct. 26, 2012, NT kernel
 Windows 10 : July 29, 2015, NT kernel
 Windows 10 Mobile: Dec. 08, 2015, NT kernel
 Windows 11?
 IoT OS

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Principles of Operating Systems 8
 A PROGRAM that
 controls the execution of application programs
 which program runs first? for how long? which program to be suspended or
swapped out? . . . .

 Two main functions

 primarily as a resource manager
 Managing resources – CPUs, memory, disks, files, . . .
 Decides between conflicting requests for efficient and fair use of resources

 An interface between applications and hardware

 Separates applications from the hardware they access
 OS provides the APIs (Application Program Interfaces) for programs to ask for OS
services/resources
 This greatly simplifies application development

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 Allow
applications to run on the system (easily, correctly,
and effectively)

 Allow
running applications to use memory as well as share
the memory

 Allow running applications to interact with each other

 Allow applications to access and share data that stored in

persistent storage
Principles of Operating Systems 10
 How does the operating system support these services?

 “Note that why the OS does this is not the main question, as the
answer should be obvious: it makes the system easier to use. ”
 “Thus, we focus on the how: what mechanisms and policies are
implemented by the OS to support its services? How does the OS
do so efficiently? What hardware support is needed?”

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 Virtualization
 Make each application believe it has each resource to itself
 CPU, Memory, etc.
 Concurrency
 Events are occurring simultaneously and may interact with one
another
 Persistence
 Access information permanently
 File system, hard drive, etc.

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A process is basically a program in execution
 Process needs resources to accomplish its task
 CPU, memory, I/O, files, initial data
 Process termination requires reclamation of any reusable
resources

 Typically
system has many processes, some are user
processes, some are OS/kernel/system processes, running
concurrently on one or more CPUs (cores)

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 Responsibilities of OS
 How to manage and control application processes?
 There are many processes running in the system

 How to perform restricted operations?

 Processes must be allowed to perform I/O and other restricted operations

 How to provide the illusion of many CPUs?

 Each given to a process

 How to regain control of the CPU?

 Even if processes are not being cooperative

 How to design an effective and efficient processor scheduler?

 Even without perfect knowledge of processes’ characteristics

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 Von Neumann model of computing
 Instructions & data of a running process must be in physical
memory in order to execute

 Main objective
 With limited memory and many processes are running
concurrently, OS determines what should be in memory
 To optimize CPU utilization and computer response to users

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 Responsibilities of OS
 How can running processes share the single pool of physical memory?
 Giving an abstraction of a private memory space for each process

 How to maintain control over which memory locations an application

can access?
 We don’t want other processes to write to another process’s memory

 How to run many processes with total memory demand higher than
physical limit?
 Getting help from the larger, slower hard disks

 How to manage free space? What should OS do if running out of free

space?
 If running out of free space, getting back some memory from running processes

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 OS is a concurrent program
 Many internal kernel data structures may be updated concurrently by
multiple execution logics

 Nowadays, multi-core systems and multi-thread programs are

prevalent
 Threads can update shared data simultaneously

 When there are many concurrently tasks running within the

same memory space, how can we build a correctly working
program?
 Programs or OS have to carefully access shared data, with the uses of
proper synchronization primitives, in order to work correctly

Principles of Operating Systems 17

 Responsibilities of OS
 What kind of primitives are needed for synchronization?
 We may have to examine different kinds of synchronization and
concurrency issues

 What support do we need from hardware and OS in order to

build useful synchronization primitives?
 We want the primitives to work correctly and efficiently

 How can we use them to solve concurrency problems?

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 The component in OS that manages storage disks is called
the file system
 Responsible for storing any data the user created in a reliable
and efficient manner on the disks of the system

 File System
 Provides a uniform, logical view of information storage
 Abstracts physical properties to logical storage unit - file
 Maps files onto physical media and provides mechanisms for
applications to manage and access files

Principles of Operating Systems 19

 Responsibilities of OS
 How to manage a persistent device?
 For example, where to find suitable storage units for a newly created file?
what will happen if deleting a file?

 How to implement the file system?

 We need some data structures on the disk for the file system to work
correctly and efficiently; e.g., given a file name, how to access the data
of the file?

 How to reduce file system I/O costs?

 Disk access is slow, is there any way to make file access faster??

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 Makes the system convenient and easy to use by abstraction

 Provides protection between applications and between OS and applications

 Allows computer system resources to be used in an efficient manner

 Can operate on many hardware configurations

 Provides a high degree of reliability and will not fail due to isolated
application/hardware errors

 Protect resources from unauthorized access by users and software

 Security, energy-efficiency, mobility…

Principles of Operating Systems 21

Principles of Operating Systems 22
Principles of Operating Systems 23
 Beyondmany possible reasons….
 Computational Thinking
 It’s all about problem solving
 There are always more problems than you could have
imagined, but luckily there are always more solutions.

 Systematic Thinking
 Engineering is nothing but trade-off.

Principles of Operating Systems 24

Principles of Operating Systems 25
 Usually we call it the shell,
which is the interface for
users to interact with OS
Contains a set of
utility functions
that will be used
or called by
application
programs and the
command layer Which is the core of
OS; it manages
resources and
directly interacts
with computer
hardware

26
 Operating Systems tend to be complex
 Provide many services (really too many!)
 support variety of hardware and software

 Operating system architectures help manage this complexity

 Organize operating system components (functionalities)
 Specify the privilege level with which each component executes

 Common options (5) Hybrid Kernels: compromise between

 Monolithic Architecture the monolithic and microkernel designs.
 Layered Architecture Used in most commercial operating
 Microkernel Architecture systems: Microsoft Windows NT 2000, XP,
 Modular Approach Vista, 7, 8, 10, ..; Mac OS X (XNU)
Principles of Operating Systems 27
 CPU operates in (at least) two modes
 Kernel mode
 Also known as privilege mode or supervisor mode
 CPU is put in kernel mode when the OS kernel executes
 It is at the highest privilege level and can execute any instruction the machine
is capable of executing

 User mode
 CPU is put in user mode when a user application is executing
 Running in a lower privilege level
 Only a subset of the machine instructions is available
 Ensures that one user program cannot execute instruction that may interfere with
operation of other user programs

Principles of Operating Systems 28

 A system call is mechanism allows an application program to
make a request to the OS for resources/services
 the set of system calls is the interface (API) to the services provided by
the OS

 When a system call occurs, the system switches from user

mode to kernel mode and executes the corresponding
kernel’s system function
 We call this mode switch
 This is achieved by some special instructions that helps the process to
trap into the kernel and return-from-trap back to user mode

Principles of Operating Systems 29

 Every OS component is contained
in the kernel
 Traditionally, OS code did not
structure its components as modules
with clearly defined interfaces

 All its components are interwoven

into one large program that runs in
privilege mode

 Any component (within kernel) can

directly communicate with any
other (e.g. by using function calls)

 Data structures are easily shared as

all in one program

Principles of Operating Systems 30

 Adv: Tend to be highly efficient

 Disadvantages
 Components can interact with hardware directly
 Architecture dependent code was spread throughout the kernel

 Components can access each other’s data and functions directly

 Changes made in one component could affect other components
 Bugs in one component can adversely affect another component
 Difficulty in determining source of subtle errors
 More susceptible to damage from malicious code (component)
 Examples: UNIX, Linux, MSDOS, and many more.

Principles of Operating Systems 31

 Groups components that
perform similar function or
specific role into a module
and layers the modules one
on top of the other

 Each layer communicates

only with layers immediately
above and below it
 Processes’ requests might pass
through many layers before
being serviced
 System efficiency can be less
than monolithic kernels
Principles of Operating Systems 32
 Pros
 Simplicity of construction and debugging
 Allows debugging starting at lowest layer, adding one layer at a time until
the whole system works correctly
 Information hiding – each layer only knows the interface
provided by immediate lower layer
 We can replace one layer by another implementation without affecting
other parts of the system

 With
the layered approach, the designers have a choice
where to draw the kernel-user boundary
Principles of Operating Systems 33
 Cons
 Poor performance
 Difficult to define and order layers
 Not flexible
 Disjunction between model and reality: real systems are more
complex, difficult for such layered abstraction (see Windows NT
story)
The first release of Windows NT (3.x) using the layered organization
suffered low performance compared to that of Windows 95.
Windows NT 4.0 moves layers from user space to kernel space and more closely
integrating them to improve the performance.

Principles of Operating Systems 34

  Virtual machine monitor
 Also named as hypervisor

 Runs on top of host OS – in

user mode OR incorporated
into host OS – kernel mode

 Virtualizing the hardware

resources and giving the
illusion to each running OS
that it controls the machine
(which is a virtual machine)

 In essence, it serves as an OS
for OSs.

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For Your Information Only

 OS-Level Virtualization: Virtualizes servers on top of the

operating system.
 Anything running inside a container can only see resources that
have been assigned to that container.
 Examples:
 LXC (LinuX Containers), LXD, Solaris “Zones”, Docker, Google
Containers, …

Principles of Operating Systems 36

For Your Information Only

 (Simplest view for comparison)

Principles of Operating Systems 37

 Moves as much
functionalities from the
kernel space into user space
processes (being called as
servers)

 Attempt to keep kernel small

 The system becomes more
stable as only the bare
essentials are running in kernel
mode
 Easier to extend and port to
other platforms

Principles of Operating Systems 38

 reduce the kernel to basic process communication and I/O control, and let
the other system services reside in user space in form of normal processes
(called servers).

Monolithic Kernel Microkernel

Principles of Operating Systems 39
 Pros
 Extensible, portable and scalable
 More secure & reliable (less code is running in kernel mode)

 Con
 Poor performance: Server processes (in user space) are
interacting by means of message exchanges, which need the
helps from kernel
 Induce significant performance overhead because of communications
have to go through kernel
 Most embedded systems adopt microkernel

Principles of Operating Systems 40

 Most modern operating
systems still adopt the
monolithic architecture but
implement kernel modules
 Each core component is
separated and implemented
as module

 The whole kernel is a collection

of modules

 E.g., Windows NT 4.0 =

monolithic + microkernel

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 Overall, similar to layers but is more flexible and efficient as
 each kernel module has well-defined, protected interfaces; any module can
call any other module

 more efficient to communicate between modules as they are all in kernel

 allows certain features to be implemented dynamically and loaded as

needed (dynamically loadable modules)
 Memory is conserved as only required modules are loaded in memory

 more extensible as kernel modules can be modified separately and new

modules can be added easily

 Examples: Solaris, Linux, and traditional Unix kernels

Principles of Operating Systems 42

 Windows System Architecture Linux System Architecture

(Source: Windows Kernel Internals by Dave Probert)

A hybrid kernel with modular design (Source: Anatomy of the Linux Kernel by M. Tim Jones)

principles A monolithic approach with the

support of loadable kernel modules
 Mac OS X (XNU) Architecture Android System Architecture

(Source: Kernel Programming Guide by Apple) (Source: Android Open Source Project)

A hybrid kernel with the support of

loadable kernel extensions
Principles of Operating Systems 44
 What is OS? It is a resource manager that manage &
coordinate the use of resources amongst users, and it also
provides an abstractive view on the computer to users.

 DifferentOS architectures have their advantages and

disadvantages; however, modern OSs tend to use the
monolithic approach with layers and kernel modules for
extensibility.

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