Operating Systems

Processes and threads

Timothy Kivumbi
Email:[email protected]

06/10/2024 Uganda Technology and Management University

Areas covered
 Process Concept
 Process Scheduling
 Operations on Processes
 Cooperating Processes
 Threads

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Processes


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 Program, job, and process
 Program, job, and process
 Modern operating systems use three terms that refer to a set of instructions: program, job, and
process.
 Program
 A program is a nonactive set of instructions stored on disk (or tape). It may or may not become a job.
 Job
 A program becomes a job from the moment it is selected for execution until it has finished running
and becomes a program again. During this time a job may or may not be executed. It may be located
on disk waiting to be loaded to memory, or it may be loaded into memory and waiting for execution
by the CPU. It may be on disk or in memory waiting for an input/output event, or it may be in memory
while being executed by the CPU.
 The program is a job in all of these situations. When a job has finished executing (either normally or
abnormally), it becomes a program and once again resides on the disk. The operating system no
longer governs the program.

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Process
 What is a process?
• A program in execution.
• A process is the unit of work in most systems.
• It is a program that has started but has not finished.
• In other words, a process is a job that is being run in memory. It has been selected among other
waiting jobs and loaded into memory. A process may be executing or it may be waiting for
CPU time.
• As long as the job is in memory, it is a process.
• A program becomes a process when an executable file is loaded into memory.
• A process will need certain resources such as CPU time, memory, files, and I/O
devices to accomplish its task.
• These resources are allocated to the process either when it is created or while it is
executing.

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Process cont.
 Loading Executable files is done via GUI mouse clicks and command line
entry of its name, etc.
 One program can have several processes
 Consider several users running different copies of the mail program, or the same user invoking
many copies of the web browser program.
 A process can initiate a sub process, which is a called a child process (and the initiating
process is sometimes referred to as its parent ).
 A child process is a replica of the parent process and shares some of its resources, but
cannot exist if the parent is terminated.

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 Process states
As a process executes, it changes state. It may be in one of the following
states:
 New : The process is just being put together/created.
 Running: Instructions are being executed. This running process holds the
CPU.

 Waiting: The process is waiting for some event to occur (such as an I/O
completion or reception of a signal)

 Ready: The process has all needed resources – waiting to be assigned

to a processor.
 Terminated: The process is being torn apart/finished execution.

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 Process states cont.

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 Process Control Block
 Each process is represented in the operating system by a process
control block
 (PCB) also called Task Controlling Block (TCB)
 It is a data structure within the operating system containing the
information needed to manage a particular process
 It can be said that the set of the PCBs defines the current state of
the operating system
 The role of the PCBs is central in process management.

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The PCB components

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 The PCB components
 Program counter. The counter indicates the address of the next instruction
to be executed for this process.

 CPU registers..
 Along with the program counter, this state information must be saved when
an interrupt occurs, to allow the process to be continued correctly afterward.
 The registers vary in number and type, depending on the computer
architecture.
 They include accumulators, index registers, stack pointers, and general-
purpose registers, plus any condition-code information

 CPU-scheduling information. This information includes a process priority,

pointers to scheduling queues, and any other scheduling parameters.

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 The PCB components cont.
Memory-management information. This information may include such items
as the value of the base and limit registers and the page tables, or segment
tables, depending on the memory system used by the operating system.

I/O status information. This information includes the list of I/O devices
allocated to the process, a list of open files, and so on
Accounting information – CPU used, clock time elapsed since start, time
limits

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CPU switching between processes

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Process Scheduling
 The operating system is responsible for managing the scheduling
activities:
 A uniprocessor system can have only one running process at a time.
 The main memory cannot always accommodate all processes at run-
time.
 The operating system will need to decide on which process to execute
next (CPU scheduling), and which processes will be brought to the
main memory (job scheduling)

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Process Scheduling Queues
 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 queue – set of processes waiting for an I/O device

 Processes migrate among the various queues

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CPU Schedulers
 Long-term scheduler (or job scheduler) – selects which processes
should be brought into the ready queue
 Short-term scheduler (or CPU scheduler) – selects which process
should be executed next and allocates CPU
 Medium-term scheduler – in charge of swapping process in and out of
memory& reduce level of Multiprogramming (some OS introduce an
additional intermediate level of scheduling)
 Processes can be described as either:
 I/O-bound process – spends more time doing I/O than
computations, many short CPU bursts
 CPU-bound process – spends more time doing computations;
few very long CPU bursts

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CPU and I/O Bursts
CPU–I/O Burst Cycle
 Process execution consists of a

Cycle of CPU execution and I/O wait.

 I/O-bound process

 spends more time doing I/O than

computations, many short CPU bursts.

 CPU-bound process

 spends more time doing computations;

 few very long CPU bursts.

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CPU-bound and I/O-bound Processes

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Context Switch
 When CPU switches to another process, the system must save the state of
the old process and load the saved state for the new process.

 A context switch is the computing process of storing and restoring the state
of a CPU (the context) such that multiple processes can share a single CPU
resource.
 The context switch is an essential feature of a multitasking operating
system.
 Context switches are usually computationally intensive and much of the
design of operating systems is to optimize the use of context switches.

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 Process Creation
Principal events that cause process creation
 System initialization
 Execution of a process creation system call by a running process
 User request to create a new process
Process creation refers to the creation of a new process by the operating
system. When a process is created, the operating system allocates the
necessary resources and sets up the environment for the process to
execute.

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 Process Creation
 Parent process create children processes, which, in turn create
other processes, forming a tree of processes
 Resource sharing
 Parent and children share all resources
 Children share subset of parent’s resources
 Execution
 Parent and children execute concurrently
 Parent waits until children terminate.

 UNIX examples
 fork system call creates new process

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 Process Termination
 Process executes last statement and asks the operating
system to delete it (exit)
 Output data from child to parent (via wait)
 Process’ resources are deallocated by operating system
 Parent may terminate execution of children processes
(abort)
 Child has exceeded allocated resources
 Task assigned to child is no longer required
 If parent is exiting
 Some operating system do not allow child to continue if its parent
terminates
 All children terminated - cascading termination

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Cooperating Processes
 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

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Advantages of process cooperation

 Information sharing. we can provide an environment to allow concurrent

access to such information.
 Computation speedup. If we want a particular task to run faster, we
must break it into subtasks, each of which will be executing in parallel with
the others.
 Modularity. We may want to construct the system in a modular fashion,
dividing the system functions into separate processes.
 Convenience. Even an individual user may work on many tasks at the
same time. For instance, a user may be editing, listening to music, and
compiling in parallel.

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processes termination
 When are processes terminated?
 Normal exit (voluntary)
 Error exit (voluntary)
 Fatal error (involuntary), due to bugs
 Killed by another process (involuntary)

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UNIX Process Control
 UNIX provides a number of system calls for process control
including:
 fork - used to create a new process
 exec - to change the program a process is executing
 exit - used by a process to terminate itself normally
 abort - used by a process to terminate itself abnormally
 kill - used by one process to kill or signal another
 wait - to wait for termination of a child process
 sleep - suspend execution for a specified time interval
 getpid - get process id
 getppid - get parent process id

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Thank you

 Read about Threads. Slides available online

06/10/2024 Uganda Technology and Management University