Fundamentals of Computer and IT Unit 12

Unit 12 Operating System Concepts

Structure:
12.1 Introduction
Objectives
12.2 Operating System Concepts
12.3 Functions of Operating System
12.4 Development of Operating System
Early Systems
Simple Batch Systems
Multi Programmed Batch Systems
Time Sharing Systems
Distributed Systems
Real-time Operating System
12.5 Operating System Components
12.6 Operating System Services
12.7 Operating Systems for Different Computers
12.8 Summary
12.9 Terminal Questions
12.10 Answers

12.1 Introduction
As we discussed in the previous unit, Computer software has become a
driving force. It is the engine that drives business decision making. It serves
as the basis for modern scientific investigation and engineering problem
solving. In this unit, we will study the operating system concepts like,
functions of an Operating System, Development of Operating System, Early
Systems, Simple Batch Systems, Multi Programmed Batch Systems, Time
Sharing Systems, Distributed Systems, Real-time Operating System,
Operating System Components, Operating System Services and Operating
Systems for Different Computers.
Objectives:
After studying this unit, you should be able to:
 describe Operating System
 deliberate the various functions of an Operating System
 explain the evolution of Operating Systems

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 define the Operating System Components

 explain the various Operating System Services

12.2 Operating System Concepts

An operating system (OS) is a platform that controls the implementation of
an application program and acts as an interface between the user and
computer hardware. The purpose of an OS is to provide an environment in
which a user can execute programs in a convenient and efficient manner.
The operating system must provide definite services to programs and to the
users of those programs in order to make the programming task easier,
these services will differ from one OS to another. It shields the user of the
machine from the low-level details of the machine's operation and provides
frequently needed facilities. There is no universal definition of what an
operating system consists of. You can think of it as being the software which
is already installed on a machine, before you add anything of your own.
Generally the operating system has a number of key features: (i) Technical
layer of software for driving the hardware of the computer, like disk drives,
the keyboard and the screen; (ii) File system which provides a way of
organizing files logically, and (iii) Simple command language which enables
users to run their own programs and to manipulate their files in a simple way.
Some operating systems also provide text editors, compilers, debuggers
and a variety of other tools. Since the operating system (OS) is in charge of
a computer, all requests to use its resources and devices need to go
through the OS. An OS therefore provides (IV) legal entry points into its
code for performing basic operations like writing to devices.
Procedure of instructions telling the computer what to do is called a program.
The user normally uses a text editor to write their program in a high level
language, such as Pascal, C, Java, etc. Alternatively, they may write it in
assembly language. Assembly language is a computer language whose
statements have an almost one to one correspondence to the instructions
understood by the CPU of the computer. It provides a way of specifying in
precise detail what machine code the assembler should create.
A compiler is used to translate a high level language program into assembly
language or machine code, and an assembler is used to translate an
assembly language program into machine code. A linker is used to combine

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reloadable object files (code files corresponding to incomplete portions of a

program) into executable code files (complete code files, for which the
addresses have been resolved for all global functions and variables).
A thread is an example of execution (the entity that executes). All the
threads that make up a process share access to the same user program,
virtual memory, open files, and other operating system resources. Each
thread has its own program counter, general purpose registers, and user
and kernel stack. The program counter and general purpose registers for a
thread are stored in the CPU when the thread is executing, and saved away
in memory when it is not executing.
Multi-threaded processes are becoming very important, because computers
with multiple processors are becoming commonplace, as are distributed
systems, and servers. It is important that you learn how to program in this
manner. Multi-threaded programming, particularly dealing with
synchronisation issues, is not trivial, and a good conceptual understanding
of synchronisation is essential.

12.3 Functions of Operating System

An operating system is a software component that acts as the core of a
computer system. It performs various functions and is essentially the
interface that connects your computer and its supported components. In this
section, we will discuss the basic functions of the operating system.
Operating systems generally accomplish these goals by running processes
in low privilege and providing service calls that invoke the operating system
kernel in high-privilege state.
The main functions of an operating System are:
Resource Management:
The resource management function of an operating system allocates
computer resources such as CPU time, main memory, secondary storage,
and input and output devices for use. One can view Operating Systems from
two points of views: Resource manager and extended machines. Form
Resource manager point of view Operating Systems manage the different
parts of the system efficiently and from extended machines point of view
Operating Systems provide a virtual machine to users that is more
convenient to use. The structurally Operating Systems can be design as a
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monolithic system, a hierarchy of layers, a virtual machine system, a micro-

kernel, or using the client-server model. The basic concepts of Operating
Systems are processes, memory management, I/O management, the file
systems, and security.
Data Management:
Data management keeps track of the data on disk and other storage
devices. The application program deals with data by file name and a
particular location within the file. The operating system's file system knows
where the data are physically stored and interaction between the application
and operating system is through the programming interface (API).
Whenever an application needs to read or write data, it makes a call to the
operating system.
Job management:
Job management controls the order and time in which applications are run
and is more sophisticated in the mainframe environment where scheduling
the daily work has always been routine. IBM's job control language (JCL)
was developed decades ago for that purpose. In a desktop environment,
batch files can be written to perform a sequence of operations that can be
scheduled to start at a given time.
Task Management:
Task management, multitasking, which is the ability to simultaneously
execute multiple programs, is available in all operating systems today.
Critical in the mainframe and server environment, applications can be
prioritized to run faster or slower depending on their purpose. In the desktop
world, multitasking is necessary for keeping several applications open at the
same time so users can bounce back and forth among them.
Device Management:
Device management controls peripheral devices by sending them
commands in their proprietary command language. The software routine
that deals with each device is called a "driver," and the operating system
requires drivers for the peripherals attached to the computer. When a new
peripheral is added, that device's driver is installed into the operating system.
User interface – The user interacts with the operating systems through the
user interface and usually interested in the look and feel of the operating

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system. The most important components of the user interface are the
command interpreter, the file system, on-line help, and application
integration. The recent trend has been toward increasingly integrated
graphical user interfaces that encompass the activities of multiple processes
on networks of computers.
Daily uses of an Operating System
– Performing application programs
– Formatting floppy diskettes
– Setting up directories to organize the files
– Displaying a list of files stored on a particular disk
– Verifying that there is enough room on a disk to save a file.
– Protecting and backing up your files by copying them to other disks for
safekeeping.
Self Assessment Questions
1. ________ is software that hides lower level details and provides a set of
higher-level functions.
2. ________ transforms the computer hardware into multiple virtual
computers, each belonging to a different program.

12.4 Development of Operating System

Operating system and computer architecture have had a great deal of
impact on each other. To simplify the use of the hardware, OS's were
developed. As operating systems were designed and used, it became
obvious that changes in the design of the hardware could simplify them.
12.4.1 Early Systems
In the initial days of electronic digital computing, the whole lot was done on
the bare hardware. Very few computers existed and those that did exist
were experimental in nature. The researchers who were making the first
computers were also the programmers and the users. They worked directly
on the “bare hardware”. There was no operating system. The experimenters
wrote their programs in assembly language and a running program had
complete control of the entire computer. Debugging consisted of a
combination of fixing both the software and hardware, rewriting the object
code and changing the actual computer itself. The nonexistence of any
operating system meant that only one person could use a computer at a

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time. Even in the research lab, there were many researchers competing for
limited computing time. The first solution was a reservation system, with
researchers signing up for specific time slots.
The answer to this problematic was to have programmers make their work
off-line on some input medium (often on punched cards, paper tape, or
magnetic tape) and then hand the work to a computer operator. The
computer operator would load up jobs in the order received (with priority
overrides based on politics and other factors). Each job still ran one at a
time with complete control of the computer, but as soon as a job finished,
the operator would transfer the results to some output medium (punched
tape, paper tape, magnetic tape, or printed paper) and deliver the results to
the suitable programmer. If the program ran to completion, the result would
be some end data. If the program crashed, memory would be transferred to
some output medium for the programmer to study (because some of the
early business computing systems used magnetic core memory, these
became known as “core dumps”). After the first successes with digital
computer experiments, computers moved out of the lab and into practical
use. The first practical application of these experimental digital computers
was the generation of artillery tables for the British and American armies.
Much of the early research in computers was paid for by the British and
American militaries. Business and scientific applications followed. As
computer use increased, programmers noticed that they were duplicating
the same efforts.
Every single programmer was writing his or her own routines for I/O, such
as reading input from a magnetic tape or writing output to a line printer. It
made sense to write a common device driver for each input or output device
and then have every programmer share the same device drivers rather than
each programmer writing his or her own. Some programmers resisted the
use of common device drivers in the belief that they could write “more
competent” or faster or "“better” device drivers of their own.
12.4.2 Simple Batch Systems
While punched cards were used for user jobs, processing of a job involved
physical actions by the system operator, e.g., loading a deck of cards into
the card reader, pressing switches on the computer's console to initiate a
job, etc. These actions wasted a lot of central processing unit (CPU) time.

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Operating System
User Program Area

Figure 12.1: Simple Batch System

To speed up processing, jobs with similar needs were batched together and
were run as a group. Batch processing (BP) was implemented by locating a
component of the BP system, called the batch monitor or supervisor,
permanently in one part of computer's memory. The remaining memory was
used to process a user job - the current job in the batch as shown in the
figure 12.1 above.
The interval between job submission and accomplishment was considerable
in batch processed system as a number of programs were put in a batch
and the entire batch had to be processed before the results were printed.
Further card reading and printing were slow as they used slower mechanical
units compared to CPU which was electronic. The speed mismatch was of
the order of 1000. To alleviate this problem programs were spooled. Spool
is an acronym for simultaneous peripheral operation on-line. In essence the
idea was to use a cheaper processor known as peripheral processing unit
(PPU) to read programs and data from cards store them on a disk. The
faster CPU read programs/data from the disk processed them and wrote the
results back on the disk. The cheaper processor then read the results from
the disk and printed them.
12.4.3 Multi Programmed Batch Systems
Even though disks are faster than card reader/ printer they are still two
orders of magnitude slower than CPU. It is thus useful to have several
programs ready to run waiting in the main memory of CPU. When one
program needs input/output (I/O) from disk it is suspended and another
program whose data is already in main memory (as shown in the figure 6.2
bellow) is taken up for execution. This is called multiprogramming.

Operating System
Program 1
Program 2
Program 3
Program 4
Figure 12.2: Multi Programmed Batch Systems

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Multiprogramming (MP) increases CPU utilization by organizing jobs such

that the CPU always has a job to execute. Multiprogramming is the first
instance where the operating system must make decisions for the user.
The MP arrangement ensures concurrent operation of the CPU and the I/O
subsystem. It ensures that the CPU is allocated to a program only when it is
not performing an I/O operation.
12.4.4 Time Sharing Systems
Multiprogramming features were overlaid on batch processing to ensure
good utilization of CPU but from the point of view of a user the service was
poor as the response time, i.e., the time elapsed between submitting a job
and getting the results was unacceptably high. Development of interactive
terminals changed the scenario. Computation became an on-line activity. A
user could provide inputs to a computation from a terminal and could also
examine the output of the computation on the same terminal. Hence, the
response time needed to be drastically reduced. This was completed by
storing programs of several users in memory and providing each user a
slice of time on CPU to process his/her program.
12.4.5 Distributed Systems
Distributed operating system is an operating system which manages a
number of computers and hardware devices which make up a Distributed
System. Such an operating system has a number of functions: it manages
the communication between entities on the system, it imposes a security
policy on the users of the system, it manages a Distributed File System, it
monitors problems with hardware and software, it manages the connections
between application programs and itself, and it allocates resources such as
file storage to the individual users of the system. A good distributed
operating system should give the user the impression that they are
interacting with a single computer.
A recent trend in computer system is to distribute computation among
several processors. In the loosely coupled systems the processors do not
share memory or a clock. Instead, each processor has its own local memory.
The processors communicate with one another using communication
network.

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The processors in a distributed system may vary in size and function, and
referred by a number of different names, such as sites, nodes, computers
and so on depending on the context. The major reasons for building
distributed systems are:
Resource sharing: If a number of different sites are connected to one
another, then a user at one site may be able to use the resources available
at the other.
Computation speed up: If a particular computation can be partitioned into
a number of sub computations that can run concurrently, then a distributed
system may allow a user to distribute computation among the various sites
to run them concurrently.
Reliability: If one site fails in a distributed system, the remaining sites can
potentially continue operations.
Communication: There are many instances in which programs need to
exchange data with one another. Distributed data base system is an
example of this.
12.4.6 Real-time Operating System
The advent of timesharing provided good response times to computer users.
However, timesharing could not satisfy the requirements of some
applications. Real-time (RT) operating systems were developed to meet the
response requirements of such applications.
There are two types of real-time systems. A hard real-time system
guarantees that critical tasks complete at a specified time. A less restrictive
type of real time system is soft real-time system, where a critical real-time
task gets priority over other tasks, and retains that priority until it completes.
The several areas in which this type is useful are multimedia, virtual reality,
and advance scientific projects such as undersea exploration and planetary
rovers. Because of the expanded uses for soft real-time functionality, it is
finding its way into most current operating systems, including major versions
of UNIX and Windows NT O.S.
A real-time operating system is one, which helps to fulfill the worst-case
response time requirements of an application. An RT OS provides the
following facilities for this purpose:
1. Multitasking within an application.
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2. Ability to define the priorities of tasks.

3. Priority driven or deadline oriented scheduling.
4. Programmer defined interrupts.
Self Assessment Questions
3. Multiprogramming (MP) increases CPU utilization by organizing jobs
such that the CPU always has a job to execute. (True/False)
4. Real-time (RT) operating systems were developed to meet the
response requirements of such applications. (True/False)

12.5 Operating System Components

Even though, not all systems have the same structure many modern
operating systems share the same goal of supporting the following types of
system components.
1. Process Management
The operating system manages many kinds of activities ranging from user
programs to system programs like printer spooler, name servers, file server
etc. Each of these activities is encapsulated in a process. A process
includes the complete execution context (code, data, PC, registers, OS
resources in use etc.).
It is important to note that a process is not a program. A process is only
ONE instant of a program in execution. There are many processes can be
running the same program. The five major activities of an operating system
in regard to process management are
1. Creation and deletion of user and system processes
2. Suspension and resumption of processes
3. A mechanism for process synchronization
4. A mechanism for process communication
5. A mechanism for deadlock handling
2. Main-Memory Management
Primary-Memory or Main-Memory is a large array of words or bytes. Each
word or byte has its own address. Main-memory provides storage that can
be access directly by the CPU. That is to say for a program to be executed,
it must in the main memory.

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The major activities of an operating in regard to memory-management are:

1. Keep track of which part of memory is currently being used and by
whom.
2. Decide which processes are loaded into memory when memory space
becomes available.
3. Allocate and de-allocate memory space as needed.
3. File Management
A file is a collection of related information defined by its creator. Computer
can store files on the disk (secondary storage), which provides long term
storage. Some examples of storage media are magnetic tape, magnetic disk
and optical disk. Each of these media has its own properties like speed,
capacity, and data transfer rate and access methods. A file system normally
organized into directories to ease their use. These directories may contain
files and other directions.
The five main major activities of an operating system in regard to file
management are
1. The creation and deletion of files.
2. The creation and deletion of directions.
3. The support of primitives for manipulating files and directions.
4. The mapping of files onto secondary storage.
5. The backup of files on stable storage media.
4. I/O System Management
I/O subsystem hides the peculiarities of specific hardware devices from the
user. Only the device driver knows the peculiarities of the specific device to
which it is assigned.
5. Secondary-Storage Management
Normally systems have numerous levels of storage, including primary
storage, secondary storage and cache storage. Instructions and data must
be placed in primary storage or cache to be referenced by a running
program. Because main memory is too small to accommodate all data and
programs, and its data are lost when power is lost, the computer system
must provide secondary storage to back up main memory. Secondary
storage consists of tapes, disks, and other media designed to hold
information that will eventually be accessed in primary storage (primary,
secondary, cache) is ordinarily divided into bytes or words consisting of a

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fixed number of bytes. Each location in storage has an address; the set of
all addresses available to a program is called an address space.
The three major activities of an operating system in regard to secondary
storage management are:
1. Scheduling the requests for memory access.
2. Managing the free space available on the secondary-storage device.
3. Allocation of storage space when new files have to be written.
6. Networking
A distributed system is a group of processors that do not share memory,
peripheral devices, or a clock. The processors communicate with one
another through communication lines called network. The communication-
network design must consider routing and connection strategies, and the
problems of contention and security.
7. Protection System
If a computer system has multiple users and allows the concurrent
execution of multiple processes, then various processes must be protected
from one another's activities. Protection refers to mechanism for controlling
the access of programs, processes, or users to the resources defined by a
computer system.
8. Command Interpreter System
A command interpreter is an interface of the operating system with the user.
The user gives commands with are executed by operating system (usually
by turning them into system calls). The main function of a command
interpreter is to get and execute the next user specified command.
Command-Interpreter is usually not part of the kernel, since multiple
command interpreters (shell, in UNIX terminology) may be supported by an
operating system, and they do not really need to run in kernel mode. There
are two main advantages of separating the command interpreter from the
kernel.
1. If we want to change the way the command interpreter looks, i.e., I want
to change the interface of command interpreter, I am able to do that if
the command interpreter is separate from the kernel. I cannot change
the code of the kernel so I cannot modify the interface.
2. If the command interpreter is a part of the kernel, it is possible for a
malicious process to gain access to certain part of the kernel that it

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should not have. To avoid this scenario it is advantageous to have the

command interpreter separate from kernel.
Self Assessment Questions
5. ______ is a collection of related information defined by its creator.
6. ________ System is a collection of processors that do not share
memory, peripheral devices, or a clock.
7. The main function of a command interpreter is to get and execute the
next user specified command. (True/False)

12.6 Operating System Services

Operating systems are responsible for providing essential services within a
computer system:
 Loading of programs and transfer of programs between secondary
storage and main memory
 Supervision of the input/output devices
 File management
 Protection facilities

Following are the five services provided by operating systems for the
convenience of the users.
1. Execution of Program
The persistence of a computer system is to allow the user to execute
programs. So the operating system provides an environment where the user
can conveniently run programs. The user does not have to worry about the
memory allocation or multitasking or anything. These things are taken care
of by the operating systems. Running a program involves the allocating and
de-allocating memory, CPU scheduling in case of multi-process. These
functions cannot be given to the user-level programs. So user-level
programs cannot help the user to run programs independently without the
help from operating systems.
2. I/O Operations
Every program needs an input and produces output. This involves the use of
I/O. The operating systems hide from the user the details of underlying
hardware for the I/O. All the users see that the I/O has been performed
without any details. So the operating system, by providing I/O, makes it
convenient for the users to run programs. For efficiently and protection
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users cannot control I/O so this service cannot be provided by user-level

programs.
3. File System Manipulation
The output of a program may need to be written into new files or input taken
from some files. The operating system provides this service. The user does
not have to worry about secondary storage management. User gives a
command for reading or writing to a file and sees his/her task accomplished.
Thus operating system makes it easier for user programs to achieve their
task.
This facility involves secondary storage management. The speed of I/O that
depends on secondary storage management is critical to the speed of many
programs and hence I think it is best relegated to the operating systems to
manage it than giving individual users the control of it. It is not difficult for the
user-level programs to provide these services but for above mentioned
reasons it is best if this service is left with operating system.
4. Communications Process
There are instances where processes need to communicate with each other
to interchange information. It may be between processes running on the
same computer or running on the different computers. By providing this
service the operating system relieves the user from the worry of passing
messages between processes. In case where the messages need to be
passed to processes on the other computers through a network, it can be
done by the user programs. The user program may be customized to the
specifications of the hardware through which the message transits and
provides the service interface to the operating system.
5. Error Finding
An error in one part of the system may cause malfunctioning of the complete
system. To avoid such a situation the operating system constantly monitors
the system for detecting the errors. This relieves the user from the worry of
errors propagating to various part of the system and causing malfunctioning.
This service cannot be allowed to be handled by user programs because it
involves monitoring and in cases altering area of memory or de-allocation of
memory for a faulty process, or may be relinquishing the CPU of a process
that goes into an infinite loop. These tasks are too critical to be handed over

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to the user programs. A user program if given these privileges can interfere
with the correct (normal) operation of the operating systems.
Self Assessment Questions
8. An error in one part of the system may cause malfunctioning of the
complete system. (True/False)
9. ________involves the allocating and de-allocating memory, CPU
scheduling in case of multi-process.

12.7 Operating Systems for Different Computers

Operating systems can be gathered according to functionality: operating
systems for Supercomputers, Computer Clusters, Mainframes, Servers,
Workstations, Desktops, Handheld Devices, Real Time Systems, or
Embedded Systems.
1. OS for Supercomputers:
Supercomputers are the fastest computers, very expensive and are
employed for specialized applications that require immense amounts of
mathematical calculations, for example, weather forecasting, animated
graphics, fluid dynamic calculations, nuclear energy research, and
petroleum exploration. Out of many operating systems used for
supercomputing UNIX and Linux are the most dominant ones.
2. Computer Clusters Operating Systems:
A computer cluster is a group of computers that work together closely so
that in many respects they can be viewed as though they are a single
computer. The components of a cluster are commonly, connected to each
other through fast local area networks. Besides many open source operating
systems, and two versions of Windows 2003 Server, Linux is popularly used
for Computer clusters.
3. Mainframe Operating Systems:
Mainframes used to be the primary procedure of computer. Mainframes are
large centralized computers and at one time they provided the bulk of
business computing through time sharing. Mainframes are still useful for
some large scale tasks, such as centralized billing systems, inventory
systems, database operations, etc.

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4. Servers Operating Systems:

Servers are computers or groups of computers that provides services to
other computers, connected via network. Based on the requirements, there
are various versions of server operating systems from different vendors,
starting with Microsoft’s Servers from Windows NT to Windows 2003, OS/2
servers, UNIX servers, Mac OS servers, and various flavors of Linux.
5. Workstation Operating Systems:
Workstations are more powerful versions of personal computers. Like
desktop computers, often only one person uses a particular workstation, and
run a more powerful version of a desktop operating system. Most of the
times workstations are used as clients in a network environment. The
popular workstation operating systems are Windows NT Workstation,
Windows 2000 Professional, OS/2 Clients, Mac OS, UNIX, Linux, etc.
6. Desktop Operating Systems:
A personal computer (PC) is a microcomputer whose price, size, and
capabilities make it useful for individuals, also known as Desktop computers
or home computers. Desktop operating systems are used for personal
computers, for example DOS, Windows 9x, Windows XP, Macintosh OS,
Linux, etc.
7. Embedded Operating Systems:
Embedded systems are combinations of processors and special software
that are inside of another device, such as the electronic ignition system on
cars. Examples of embedded operating systems are Embedded Linux,
Windows CE, Windows XP Embedded, Free DOS, Free RTOS, etc.
8. Operating Systems for Handheld Computers:
Handheld operating systems are much smaller and less capable than
desktop operating systems, so that they can fit into the limited memory of
handheld devices. The operating systems include Palm OS, Windows CE,
EPOC, and many Linux versions such as Qt Palmtop, and Pocket Linux, etc.
Self Assessment Questions
10. __________ are computers or groups of computers that provides
services to other computers, connected via network.
11. __________are more powerful versions of personal computers.

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12. __________systems are combinations of processors and special

software that are inside of another device, such as the electronic
ignition system on cars.

12.8 Summary
Let’s recapitulate the important concepts discussed in this unit:
 A compiler is used to translate a high level language program into
assembly language or machine code, and an assembler is used to
translate an assembly language program into machine code.
 Resources Management – An operating system as resource manager
controls how processes (the active agents) may access resources
(passive entities).
 Multiprogramming (MP) increases CPU utilization by organizing jobs
such that the CPU always has a job to execute.
 Multiprogramming features were overlaid on BP to ensure good
utilization of CPU but from the point of view of a user the service was
poor as the response time, i.e., the time elapsed between submitting a
job and getting the results was unacceptably high.
 A real-time operating system is one, which helps to fulfill the worst-case
response time requirements of an application.
 A task is a sub-computation in an application program, which can be
executed concurrently with other sub-computations in the program,
except at specific places in its execution called synchronization points.
 Primary – Memory or Main-Memory is a large array of words or bytes.
 A file is a collection of related information defined by its creator.
 A distributed system is a group of processors that do not share memory,
peripheral devices, or a clock.
 A command interpreter is an interface of the operating system with the
user.
 A computer cluster is a group of computers that work together closely so
that in many respects they can be viewed as though they are a single
computer.

12.9 Terminal Questions

1. What is Operating system? How it is useful in the computer?
2. Briefly explain functions of operating system.
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Fundamentals of Computer and IT Unit 12

3. What is resource management?

4. Define multi programming batch systems.
5. What is distributed system?
6. What is the role of real time operating system?

12.10 Answers
Self Assessment Questions
1. Abstraction
2. operating system
3. True
4. True
5. File
6. Distributed
7. True
8. True
9. Running a program
10. Servers
11. Workstations
12. Embedded

Terminal Questions
1. An operating system (OS) is a program that controls the execution of an
application program and acts as an interface between the user and
computer hardware. (Refer section 12.2)
2. Modern Operating systems generally have following three major goals.
(Refer section 12.3)
3. An operating system as resource manager controls how processes (the
active agents) may access resources (passive entities). (Refer section
12.3)
4. Multiprogramming (MP) increases CPU utilization by organizing jobs
such that the CPU always has a job to execute. (Refer section 12.4.3)
5. A recent trend in computer system is to distribute computation among
several processors. (Refer section 12.4.5)
6. Real-time (RT) operating systems were developed to meet the response
requirements of such applications. (Refer section 12.4.6)

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Fundamentals of Computer and IT Unit 12

Book References:
 Modern Operating Systems (3rd Edition) by Andrew S. Tanenbaum
 Operating System Concepts Eight Edition by Avi Silberschatz, Peter
Baer Galvin & Greg Gagne
 Operating Systems Internals and Design Principles by William Stallings
E-References
 www.computerhope.com
 www.howstuffworks.com
 www.personal.kent.edu
 www.searchcio-midmarket.techtarget.com

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