UNIT 1

Introduction and
Operating System Structures
Part 1 Introduction, What OS do, Computer System Organization

MCA 3 Semester
rd

Laishram Darmoni
Project Associate
NIELIT IMPHAL
 Operating System
• It acts as an intermediary between the user of a computer and computer hardware.
• Is a software that manages computer hardware.
• Purpose - To provide an environment in which a user can execute programs conveniently and efficiently.

Goals of the Operating System

There are two types of goals of an Operating System
• Primary Goal: To provide a user-friendly and convenient
environment.
• Secondary Goal: The secondary goal of an OS is efficiency. Should
perform all the management of resources in such a way that the
resources are fully utilized and no resource should be held idle if
some request to that resource is there at that instant of time.

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 What Operating Systems Do?

A computer system can be divided roughly

into four components:
• Hardware
• Operating system
• Application programs
• User

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 Operating System – User View
• Depends on the point of view
• Users want convenience, ease of use and good performance
• Don’t care about resource utilization
• But shared computer such as mainframe or minicomputer
must keep all users happy
• Users of dedicate systems such as workstations have
dedicated resources but frequently use shared resources
from servers
• Handheld computers are resource poor, optimized for
usability and battery life
• Some computers have little or no user interface, such as
embedded computers in devices and automobiles

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 Operating System – System View
WHY STUDY OPERATING SYSTEMS?
• OS is a resource allocator Although there are many practitioners of computer science,
only a small percentage of them will be involved in the
• Manages all resources
creation or modification of an operating system. Why, then,
• Decides between conflicting requests for study operating systems and how they work? Simply because,
as almost all code runs on top of an operating system,
efficient and fair resource use knowledge of how operating systems work is crucial to proper,
efficient, effective, and secure programming. Understanding
• OS is a control program the fundamentals of operating systems, how they drive
computer hardware, and what they provide to applications is
• Controls execution of programs to prevent not only essential to those who program them but also highly
useful to those who write programs on them and use them.
errors and improper use of the computer

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 Computer System Organization
Computer-system operation
• One or more CPUs, device controllers connect through common bus providing access to shared memory
• Concurrent execution of CPUs and devices competing for memory cycles

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 Interrupts

• Events that take place to inform the operating system to

stop the current execution of the current process and
handle the Interrupt Service Routine (ISR).
• ISR is responsible to find out which software or
hardware caused the interrupt and informing the
CPU about it.
• CPU will service the request and after the completion of
the request, CPU resumes the execution of the process
which CPU was previously executing.
• Interrupts can be caused by hardware as well as
software.

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 Hardware Interrupts
• When an external device wants the attention of the operating system to service a certain request, they raise an
interrupt which is called hardware interrupts.
• All the external devices are connected to a single Interrupt Request Line and the Interrupt Request Line is used
for the interrupts.

The hardware interrupts are further categorized into

two types:
• Maskable Interrupts: Hardware interrupts
that can be ignored or disabled are called
maskable interrupts.
• Non-Maskable interrupts: Hardware
interrupts that can’t be ignored or disabled
are called non-maskable interrupts.

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 Software Interrupts

• Software interrupts generally take place

when there are exceptions in the
process or by using special instructions
that cause the interrupts.
• While having the system calls in our system,
we generally have the software interrupt.
Division by zero throws an exception which
caused the software interrupt, whereas
while we use fork() system call, fork() also
invokes a software interrupt.

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 Polling
• Mechanism that indicates the CPU that a Interrupt Polling
device requires its attention. In interrupt, the device notices the CPU Whereas, in polling, CPU steadily checks
• It is a continuous act to figure out that it requires its attention. whether the device needs attention.

whether the device is working properly. An interrupt is not a protocol, its a Whereas it isn’t a hardware mechanism,
• As it is mostly used with input/output hardware mechanism. its a protocol.
(I/O), it is also called polled I/O or In interrupt, the device is serviced by While in polling, the device is serviced
software driven I/O. interrupt handler. by CPU.
• Polling causes the wastage of many CPU Whereas CPU steadily ballots the device
Interrupt can take place at any time.
cycles. Especially, if there are many at regular or proper interval.
devices to check, then the time taken to In interrupt, interrupt request line is While in polling, Command ready bit is
poll them could exceed the time available used as indication for indicating that used as indication for indicating that
to service the I/O device. device requires servicing. device requires servicing.

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 Storage Structure
• Main memory – only large storage media that the CPU can access directly (Random access, Typically volatile)
• Secondary storage – extension of main memory that provides large nonvolatile storage capacity

• Hard disks – rigid metal or glass platters

covered with magnetic recording material
• Disk surface is logically divided into
tracks, which are subdivided into
sectors
• The disk controller determines the
logical interaction between the
device and the computer
• Solid-state disks – faster than hard
disks, nonvolatile
• Various technologies
• Becoming more popular
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 Direct Memory Access (DMA)

• Direct memory access (DMA) is a method that

allows an input/output (I/O) device to send or
receive data directly to or from the main
memory, bypassing the CPU to speed up
memory operations.
• The process is managed by a chip known as a
DMA controller (DMAC).

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