Chapter 3: Processes

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Chapter 3: Processes
Process Concept
Process Scheduling
Operations on Processes
Interprocess Communication
Communication in Client-Server Systems

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.2 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Process Concept

Process – a program in execution; process execution must

progress in sequential fashion
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 in Memory

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.4 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 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 3.5 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Diagram of Process State

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.6 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 3.7 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 CPU Switch From Process to Process

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.8 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 3.9 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Ready Queue And Various I/O Device Queues

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.10 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Representation of Process Scheduling

Queueing diagram represents queues, resources, flows

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.11 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 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 3.12 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 3.13 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 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 3.14 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 A Tree of Processes in Linux

i ni t
pi d = 1

l ogi n kt hr e add s s hd
pi d = 8415 pi d = 2 pi d = 3028

bas h khe l pe r pdf l us h s s hd

pi d = 8416 pi d = 6 pi d = 200 pi d = 3610

e mac s t cs ch
ps
pi d = 9204 pi d = 4005
pi d = 9298

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.15 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 3.16 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 C Program Forking Separate Process

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.17 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 (cascading
termination)

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.18 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

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.19 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Communications Models
(a) Message passing. (b) shared memory.

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.20 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Shared Memory Systems

IPC using shared memory requires communicating

processes to establish a region of shared memory.
Normally, the operating system prevents one process
accessing other process’s memory
Requires that two or more processes agree to remove
this restriction
Communication is under the control of the 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.

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.21 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 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

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.22 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 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

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.23 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 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;
}

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.24 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 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 */

}

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.25 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Message Passing Systems

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

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.26 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 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?

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.27 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Message Passing (Cont.)

Implementation of communication link

Physical:
Shared memory
 Hardware bus
 Network
Logical:
 Direct or indirect
 Synchronous or asynchronous
 Automatic or explicit buffering

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.28 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 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

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.29 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 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

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.30 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 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

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.31 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 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 3.32 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 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

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.33 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Communications in Client-Server Systems

Shared memory and message passing can also be used in

client-server systems.
In addition, client-server systems use three other strategies:
Sockets
Remote Procedure Calls
Pipes

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.34 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 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 [Link]:1625 refers to port 1625 on host

[Link]

Communication consists between a pair of sockets

All ports below 1024 are well known, used for standard
services

Special IP address [Link] (loopback) to refer to system on

which process is running

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.35 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Socket Communication

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.36 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 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:

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.37 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Sockets in Java (Cont.)

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.38 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 End of Chapter 3

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013