Processes
Process Concept
• An operating system executes a variety of programs:
• Batch system – jobs
• Time-shared systems – user programs or tasks
• Textbook uses the terms job and process almost interchangeably
• Process – a program in execution; process execution must progress in a
sequential fashion
• Multiple parts
• The program code, also called the text section
• Current activity, including program counter, processor registers
• Stack containing temporary data
• Function parameters, return addresses, local variables
• Data section containing global variables
• Heap containing memory dynamically allocated during run time
Process Concept (Cont.)
• Program is passive entity stored on disk (executable file),
process is active
• Program becomes process when executable file loaded into memory
• Execution of program started via GUI mouse clicks, command
line entry of its name, etc
• One program can be several processes
• Consider multiple users executing the same program
Process in Memory
Process State
• As a process executes, it changes state
• new: The process is being created
• running: Instructions are being executed
• waiting: The process is waiting for some event to
occur
• ready: The process is waiting to be assigned to a
processor
• terminated: The process has finished execution
Diagram of Process State
Process Control Block (PCB)
Information associated with each process
(also called task control block)
• Process state – running, waiting, etc
• Program counter – location of instruction to
next execute
• CPU registers – contents of all process-centric
registers
• CPU scheduling information- priorities,
scheduling queue pointers
• Memory-management information – memory
allocated to the process
• Accounting information – CPU used, clock
time elapsed since start, time limits
• I/O status information – I/O devices allocated
to process, list of open files
CPU Switch From Process to Process
Threads
• So far, the process has a single thread of execution
• Consider having multiple program counters per process
• Multiple locations can execute at once
• Multiple threads of control -> threads
• Must then have storage for thread details, multiple program
counters in PCB
Process Scheduling
• Maximize CPU use, quickly switch processes onto CPU
for time-sharing
• Process scheduler selects among available processes
for the next execution on CPU
• Maintains scheduling queues of processes
• Job queue – set of all processes in the system
• Ready queue – set of all processes residing in main memory,
ready and waiting to execute
• Device queues – set of processes waiting for an I/O device
• Processes migrate among the various queues
Ready Queue And Various I/O Device Queues
Representation of Process Scheduling
● Queueing diagram represents queues, resources, flows
Schedulers
• Short-term scheduler (or CPU scheduler) – selects which process should be
executed next and allocates CPU
• Sometimes the only scheduler in a system
• Short-term scheduler is invoked frequently (milliseconds) ⇒ (must be fast)
• Long-term scheduler (or job scheduler) – selects which processes should be
brought into the ready queue
• Long-term scheduler is invoked infrequently (seconds, minutes) ⇒ (may be
slow)
• The long-term scheduler controls the degree of multiprogramming
• Processes can be described as either:
• I/O-bound process – spends more time doing I/O than computations, many
short CPU bursts
• CPU-bound process – spends more time doing computations; few very long
CPU bursts
• Long-term scheduler strives for good process mix
Addition of Medium Term Scheduling
• A Medium-term scheduler can be added if the degree of multiple programming needs to
decrease
• Remove process from memory, store on disk, bring back in from disk to continue execution:
swapping
Context Switch
• When CPU switches to another process, the system must save the
state of the old process and load the saved state for the new process
via a context switch
• Context of a process represented in the PCB
• Context-switch time is overhead; the system does no useful work
while switching
• The more complex the OS and the PCB the longer the context switch
• Time dependent on hardware support
• Some hardware provides multiple sets of registers per CPU multiple contexts
loaded at once
Operations on Processes
• System must provide mechanisms for:
• process creation,
• process termination
Process Creation
• Parent process create children processes, which, in turn create other
processes, forming a tree of processes
• Generally, process identified and managed via a process identifier
(pid)
• Resource sharing options
• Parent and children share all resources
• Children share subset of parent’s resources
• Parent and child share no resources
• Execution options
• Parent and children execute concurrently
• Parent waits until children terminate
A Tree of Processes in Linux
Process Creation (Cont.)
• Address space
• Child duplicate of parent
• Child has a program loaded into it
• UNIX examples
• fork() system call creates new process
• exec() system call used after a fork() to replace the
process’ memory space with a new program
C Program Forking Separate Process
Creating a Separate Process via Windows API
Process Termination
• Process executes last statement and then asks the operating
system to delete it using the exit() system call.
• Returns status data from child to parent (via wait())
• Process’ resources are deallocated by operating system
• Parent may terminate the execution of children processes using
the abort() system call. Some reasons for doing so:
• Child has exceeded allocated resources
• Task assigned to the child is no longer required
• The parent is exiting and the operating system does not allow a child to
continue if its parent terminates
Process Termination
• Some operating systems do not allow child to exists if its parent has terminated. If a
process terminates, then all its children must also be terminated.
• cascading termination. All children, grandchildren, etc. are terminated.
• The termination is initiated by the operating system.
• The parent process may wait for termination of a child process by using the
wait()system call. The call returns status information and the pid of the
terminated process
pid = wait(&status);
• The process entry must remain in the process table until the parent calls wait(),
because the process table contains process’s exist status.
• If the process is terminated and no parent is waiting (did not invoke wait()), the
process is a zombie
• If the parent terminated without invoking wait, the process is an orphan
• OS assigns the init process as its parent and init invokes wait periodically.
Interprocess Communication
• Processes within a system may be independent or cooperating
• Cooperating process can affect or be affected by other
processes, including sharing data
• Reasons for cooperating processes:
• Information sharing
• Computation speedup
• Modularity
• Convenience
• Cooperating processes need interprocess communication (IPC)
• Two models of IPC
• Shared memory
• Message passing
Communications Models
(a) Message passing. (b) shared memory.
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
• Advantages of process cooperation
• Information sharing
• Computation speed-up
• Modularity
• Convenience
Producer-Consumer Problem
• Paradigm for cooperating processes, producer process produces
information that is consumed by a consumer process
• unbounded-buffer places no practical limit on the size of the
buffer
• bounded-buffer assumes that there is a fixed buffer size
Bounded-Buffer – Shared-Memory Solution
• Shared data
#define BUFFER_SIZE 10
typedef struct {
. . .
} item;
item buffer[BUFFER_SIZE];
int in = 0;
int out = 0;
• Solution is correct, but can only use BUFFER_SIZE-1 elements
Bounded-Buffer – Producer
item next_produced;
while (true) {
/* produce an item in next produced */
while (((in + 1) % BUFFER_SIZE) == out)
; /* do nothing */
buffer[in] = next_produced;
in = (in + 1) % BUFFER_SIZE;
}
Bounded Buffer – Consumer
item next_consumed;
while (true) {
while (in == out)
; /* do nothing */
next_consumed = buffer[out];
out = (out + 1) % BUFFER_SIZE;
/* consume the item in next consumed */
}
Inter-process Communication – Shared Memory
• An area of memory shared among the processes that wish to
communicate
• The communication is under the control of the users processes not the
operating system.
• Major issues is to provide mechanism that will allow the user
processes to synchronize their actions when they access shared
memory.
Interprocess Communication – Message Passing
• Mechanism for processes to communicate and to synchronize their
actions
• Message system – processes communicate with each other without
resorting to shared variables
• IPC facility provides two operations:
• send(message)
• receive(message)
• The message size is either fixed or variable
Message Passing (Cont.)
• If processes P and Q wish to communicate, they need to:
• Establish a communication link between them
• Exchange messages via send/receive
• Implementation issues:
• How are links established?
• Can a link be associated with more than two processes?
• How many links can there be between every pair of communicating processes?
• What is the capacity of a link?
• Is the size of a message that the link can accommodate fixed or variable?
• Is a link unidirectional or bi-directional?
Message Passing (Cont.)
• Implementation of communication link
• Physical:
• Shared memory
• Hardware bus
• Network
• Logical:
• Direct or indirect
• Synchronous or asynchronous
• Automatic or explicit buffering
Direct Communication
• Processes must name each other explicitly:
• send (P, message) – send a message to process P
• receive(Q, message) – receive a message from process Q
• Properties of communication link
• Links are established automatically
• A link is associated with exactly one pair of communicating
processes
• Between each pair there exists exactly one link
• The link may be unidirectional, but is usually bi-directional
Indirect Communication
• Messages are directed and received from mailboxes (also referred to as
ports)
• Each mailbox has a unique id
• Processes can communicate only if they share a mailbox
• Properties of communication link
• Link established only if processes share a common mailbox
• A link may be associated with many processes
• Each pair of processes may share several communication links
• Link may be unidirectional or bi-directional
Indirect Communication
• Operations
• create a new mailbox (port)
• send and receive messages through mailbox
• destroy a mailbox
• Primitives are defined as:
send(A, message) – send a message to mailbox A
receive(A, message) – receive a message from mailbox A
Indirect Communication
• Mailbox sharing
• P1, P2, and P3 share mailbox A
• P1, sends; P2 and P3 receive
• Who gets the message?
• Solutions
• Allow a link to be associated with at most two processes
• Allow only one process at a time to execute a receive operation
• Allow the system to select arbitrarily the receiver. Sender is notified who the
receiver was.
Synchronization
• Message passing may be either blocking or non-blocking
• Blocking is considered synchronous
• Blocking send -- the sender is blocked until the message is received
• Blocking receive -- the receiver is blocked until a message is available
• Non-blocking is considered asynchronous
• Non-blocking send -- the sender sends the message and continue
• Non-blocking receive -- the receiver receives:
A valid message, or
Null message
Synchronization (Cont.)
Producer-consumer becomes trivial
message next_produced;
while (true) {
/* produce an item in next produced */
send(next_produced);
}
message next_consumed;
while (true) {
receive(next_consumed);
/* consume the item in next consumed */
}
Buffering
• Queue of messages attached to the link.
• implemented in one of three ways
1. Zero capacity – no messages are queued on a link.
Sender must wait for receiver (rendezvous)
2. Bounded capacity – finite length of n messages
Sender must wait if link full
3. Unbounded capacity – infinite length
Sender never waits
Sockets
• A socket is defined as an endpoint for communication
• Concatenation of IP address and port – a number included at start of
message packet to differentiate network services on a host
• The socket 161.25.19.8:1625 refers to port 1625 on host 161.25.19.8
• Communication consists between a pair of sockets
• All ports below 1024 are well known, used for standard services
• Special IP address 127.0.0.1 (loopback) to refer to system on which
process is running
Socket Communication
Sockets in Java
• Three types of sockets
• Connection-oriented (TCP)
• Connectionless (UDP)
• MulticastSocket class–
data can be sent to multiple
recipients
• Consider this “Date” server:
Remote Procedure Calls
• Remote procedure call (RPC) abstracts procedure calls between
processes on networked systems
• Again uses ports for service differentiation
• Stubs – client-side proxy for the actual procedure on the server
• The client-side stub locates the server and marshalls the parameters
• The server-side stub receives this message, unpacks the marshalled
parameters, and performs the procedure on the server
Remote Procedure Calls (Cont.)
• Data representation handled via External Data Representation (XDL)
format to account for different architectures
• Big-endian and little-endian
• Remote communication has more failure scenarios than local
• Messages can be delivered exactly once rather than at most once
• OS typically provides a rendezvous (or matchmaker) service to connect
client and server.
Execution of RPC
Pipes
• Acts as a conduit allowing two processes to communicate
• Issues:
• Is communication unidirectional or bidirectional?
• In the case of two-way communication, is it half or full-duplex?
• Must there exist a relationship (i.e., parent-child) between the
communicating processes?
• Can the pipes be used over a network?
• Ordinary pipes – cannot be accessed from outside the process that
created it. Typically, a parent process creates a pipe and uses it to
communicate with a child process that it created.
• Named pipes – can be accessed without a parent-child relationship.
Ordinary Pipes
• Ordinary Pipes allow communication in standard producer-consumer style
• Producer writes to one end (the write-end of the pipe)
• Consumer reads from the other end (the read-end of the pipe)
• Ordinary pipes are therefore unidirectional
• Require parent-child relationship between communicating processes
• Windows calls these anonymous pipes
• See Unix and Windows code samples in textbook
Named Pipes
• Named Pipes are more powerful than ordinary pipes
• Communication is bidirectional
• No parent-child relationship is necessary between the
communicating processes
• Several processes can use the named pipe for communication
• Provided on both UNIX and Windows systems
• LAB-1 Ground Floor
• Wed (1-3 PM)
• CS roll number 1 to 70
• LAB-2 Second Floor
• Wed (1-3 PM)
• CS roll numbers 71 – till the last roll number
• ES all roll numbers
• Any other enrolled student
