Chapter 3: Processes
Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
Process Concept
Process – a program in execution; process execution must progress
in sequential fashion
A process has multiple parts
The program code, also called 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
Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.3 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
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
Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.4 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
Process in Memory
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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
Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.6 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
Diagram of Process State
Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.7 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
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
Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.8 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
CPU Switch from Process to Process
Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.9 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
Threads
So far, 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
See next chapter
Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.10 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
Process Representation in Linux
Represented by the C structure task_struct
pid t_pid; /* process identifier */
long state; /* state of the process */
unsigned int time_slice /* scheduling information */
struct task_struct *parent; /* this process’s parent */
struct list_head children; /* this process’s children */
struct files_struct *files; /* list of open files */
struct mm_struct *mm; /* address space of this process */
Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.11 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
Process Scheduling
Maximize CPU use, quickly switch processes onto CPU for time
sharing
Process scheduler selects among available processes for
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
Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.12 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
Ready Queue and Various I/O Device Queues
Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.13 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
Representation of Process Scheduling
Queueing diagram represents queues, resources, flows
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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
Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.15 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
Addition of Medium Term Scheduling
Medium-term scheduler can be added if degree of multiple
programming needs to decrease
Remove process from memory, store on disk, bring back in
from disk to continue execution: swapping
Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.16 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
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
Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.17 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
Operations on Processes
System must provide mechanisms for:
process creation,
process termination,
and so on as detailed next
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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
Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.19 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
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
Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.20 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
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 child is no longer required
The parent is exiting and the operating systems does not
allow a child to continue if its parent terminates
Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.21 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
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);
If no parent waiting (did not invoke wait()) process is a zombie
If parent terminated without invoking wait , process is an orphan
Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.22 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
Multiprocess Architecture – Chrome Browser
Many web browsers run as single process (some still do)
If one web site causes trouble, entire browser can hang or crash
Google Chrome Browser is multi-process with 3 different types of
processes:
Browser process manages user interface, disk and network I/O
Renderer process renders web pages, deals with HTML,
JavaScript. A new renderer created for each website opened
Runs in sandbox restricting disk and network I/O, minimizing
effect of security exploits
Plug-in process for each type of plug-in
Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.23 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
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
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Communications Models
(a) Message passing. (b) shared memory.
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Communications Models
(a) shared memory (b) Message passing
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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
Different combinations possible
If both send and receive are blocking, we have a rendezvous
Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.27 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
End of Chapter 3
Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
