operating system? Can busy waiting be avoided altogether? Explain your answer. Answer: Busy waiting means that a process is waiting for a condition to be satisfied in a tight loop without relinquishing the processor. Alternatively, a process could wait by relinquishing the processor, and block on a condition and wait to be awakened at some appropriate time in the future. Busy waiting can be avoided but incurs the overhead associated with putting a process to sleep and having to wake it up when the appropriate program state is reached.
2. Why do Solaris, Linux, and Windows 2000 use spinlocks as a synchronization mechanism only on multiprocessor systems and not on single processor systems? Answer: Spinlocks are only used as a synchronization mechanism on multiprocessor systems in Solaris, Linux, and Windows 2000. This is because the condition that would break a process or thread out of spinlock could only be attained by executing a distinct process and thus not appropriate for single processor systems. If the process does not give up the processor then other processes would not get the chance to set the program condition required for the first process pr thread to make progress. Whereas, in multi-processor systems other processes can run and get executed on other processors and in process they change the program state and release the first process or thread from the spinlock. Thus, Solaris, Linux, and Windows 2000 use spinlocks as a synchronization mechanism only on multiprocessor systems and not on single processor systems.
3.Suppose that the following processes arrive for execution at the times indicated. Each process will run for the amount of time listed. In answering the questions, use nonpreemptive scheduling, and base all the decisions on the information you have at the time the decision must be made.
a.What is the average turnaround time for these processes with the FCFS scheduling algorithm? b. What is the average turnaround time for these processes with the SJF scheduling algorithm? c. The SJF algorithm is supposed to improve performance, but notice that we choose to run process P1 at time 0 because we did not know that two shorter processes would arrive soon. Compute what the average turnaround time will be if the CPU is left idle for the first 1 unit and then SJF scheduling is used. Remember that processes P1 and P2 are waiting during this idle time, so their waiting time may increase. The algorithm could be known as future-knowledge Scheduling a.Solution: Average turnaround for these processes: ( 8 + (12 - 0.4) + (13 - 1)) / 3 = 10.53 b.Solution: Average turnaround for these processes: ( 8 + (9 - 1) + (13 – 0.4)) / 3 = 9.53 c.Solution: CPU is left idle: Average turnaround for these processes: ((2 - 1) + ( 6 – 0.4 ) + ( 14 - 0)) / 3 = 6.87 4. A CPU scheduling algorithm determines an order for the execution of its scheduled processes. Given 'n' processes to be scheduled on one processor, how many possible different schedules are there? Answer: Number of possible schedules can be calculated as follows: - The first process can be selected in n ways. - The second process can be selected in (n-1) ways. - The third process can be selected in (n-2) ways. - Similarly, the kth process can be selected in (n-k+1) ways. - The last process can be selected in 1 way. Therefore, the total number of possible schedules = n x (n-1) x (n-2) x ... x 2 x 1 = n!
5. What are three requirements of any solution to the critical sections problem? Why are the requirements needed? Answer: 1. Mutual Exclusion - If process P, is executing in its critical section, then no other processes can be executing in their critical sections 2. Progress - If no process is executing in its critical section and there exist some processes that wish to enter their critical section, then the selection of the processes that will enter the critical section next cannot be postponed indefinitely 3. Bounded Waiting - A bound must exist on the number of times that other processes are allowed to enter their critical sections after a process has made a request to enter its critical section and before that request is granted • Assume that each process executes at a nonzero speed • No assumption concerning relative speed of the n processes
6. What is deadlock? What is starvation? How do they differ from each other?
Answer:Deadlock-two or more processes are waiting indefinitely for an event that can be caused by only one of the waiting processes Let S and Q be two semaphores initialized to 1 Po P1 wait (S); wait (Q); wait (Q); wait (S); …. …. signal (S); signal (Q); signal (Q); signal (S);
Starvation-indefinite blocking: A process may never be removed from the semaphore queue in which it is suspended. Difference between Deadlock and Starvation:
Deadlock Starvation All processes keep waiting for each other to High priority processes keep executing complete and none get executed and low priority processes are blocked
Resources are blocked by the processes Resources are continuously utilized by
high priority processes
Necessary conditions Mutual Exclusion, Hold Priorities are assigned to the processes and Wait, No preemption, Circular Wait
Also known as Circular wait Also known as lived lock
It can be prevented by avoiding the necessary It can be prevented by Aging
