Chapter 3: Processes

Chapter 3: Processes
 Process Concept
 Process Scheduling
 Operations on Processes
 Interprocess Communication
 IPC in Shared-Memory Systems
 IPC in Message-Passing Systems
 Examples of IPC Systems
 Communication in Client-Server Systems
 Objectives
 Identify the separate components of a process and illustrate
how they are represented and scheduled in an operating
system.
 Describe how processes are created and terminated in an
operating system, including developing programs using the
appropriate system calls that perform these operations.
 Describe and contrast interprocess communication using
shared memory and message passing.
 Design programs that uses pipes and POSIX shared memory
to perform interprocess communication.
 Describe client-server communication using sockets and
remote procedure calls.
 Design kernel modules that interact with the Linux operating
system.
 Process Concept

 An operating system executes a variety of programs that run as a

process.
 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
 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
Memory Layout of a C Program
 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
 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
 Explore in detail in Chapter 4
 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 */
 Process Scheduling

 Maximize CPU use, quickly switch processes onto CPU core

 Process scheduler selects among available processes for
next execution on CPU core
 Maintains scheduling queues of processes
 Ready queue – set of all processes residing in main
memory, ready and waiting to execute
 Wait queues – set of processes waiting for an event (i.e.
I/O)
 Processes migrate among the various queues
Ready and Wait Queues
Representation of Process Scheduling
CPU Switch From Process to Process
A context switch occurs when the CPU
switches from one process to another.
 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
 Multitasking in Mobile Systems
 Some mobile systems (e.g., early version of iOS) allow only one
process to run, others suspended
 Due to screen real estate, user interface limits iOS provides for a
 Single foreground process- controlled via user interface
 Multiple background processes– in memory, running, but not
on the display, and with limits
 Limits include single, short task, receiving notification of events,
specific long-running tasks like audio playback
 Android runs foreground and background, with fewer limits
 Background process uses a service to perform tasks
 Service can keep running even if background process is
suspended
 Service has no user interface, small memory use
 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
 Parent process calls wait() for the child to terminate
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 child is no longer required
 The parent is exiting and the operating systems 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);
 If no parent waiting (did not invoke wait()) process is a zombie
 If parent terminated without invoking wait , process is an orphan
Android Process Importance Hierarchy
 Mobile operating systems often have to terminate processes to reclaim
system resources such as memory. From most to least important:
o Foreground process
o Visible process
o Service process
o Background process
o Empty process
 Android will begin terminating processes that are least important.
 Multiprocess Architecture – Chrome Browser

 Many web browsers ran as single process (some still do)

 If one web site causes trouble, entire browser can hang or crash
 Google Chrome Browser is multiprocess 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
 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) Shared memory. (b) Message passing.
 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
 Interprocess 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.