Chapter 3

Outline
• Process Concept
• Process Scheduling
• Operations on Processes
• Interprocess Communication
• IPC in Shared-Memory Systems
• IPC in Message-Passing Systems
• Communication in Client-Server Systems
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. No parallel execution of instructions of a single process
• 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 an executable file is 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
Process State
• As a process executes, it changes state
• New: The process is being created
• Ready: The process is waiting to be assigned to a processor
• Waiting: The process is waiting for some event to occur
• Running: Instructions are being executed
• 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 Scheduling
• The Objective of multiprogramming is to have some process running at all
times to maximize CPU utilization.
• The Objective of timesharing is to switch the CPU among process so
frequently that user interact with each program while it is running.
• To meet these Objectives, the process scheduler selects an available
process for program execution on the CPU.
❖For single-processor system, there will never be more than one running
process.
❖If there are more processes, the rest will have to wait until the CPU is
free and can be rescheduled.
Process Scheduling
• Process scheduler selects among available processes for next
execution on CPU core
• Goal -- Maximize CPU use, quickly switch processes onto CPU core
• Maintains scheduling queues of processes
• Job queue – set of all processes in the system(HD)
• Ready queue – set of all processes residing in main memory, ready
and waiting to execute(Main memory)
• Device queues – set of processes waiting for an I/O device
• Processes migrate among the various queues
Representation of Process Scheduling
 Schedulers
• Long-term scheduler (or job scheduler) – selects which processes should be brought into
the ready queue
• A long-term scheduler determines which programs are admitted to the system for processing.
• It selects processes from the queue and loads them into memory for execution. Process loads into
the memory for CPU scheduling.
• It also controls the degree of multiprogramming.
Short-term scheduler (or CPU scheduler) – selects which process should be executed next
and allocates CPU.
• It is the change of ready state to running state of the process.
• Short-term schedulers, also known as dispatchers, make the decision of which process to execute
next.
• Short-term schedulers are faster than long-term schedulers.
• 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

Medium Term Scheduler can be added if degree of multiple programming

needs to decrease. Remove process from memory ,store on disk, bring back from
disk to continue execution: swapping
Addition of Medium Term Scheduling
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 (current state) of a process represented in the PCB
• Context-switch time is pure 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(speed in milliseconds)
• Why we need context?
Operations on Processes
• System must provide mechanisms for:
• Process creation
• Process termination
 Process Creation
• A process may create several new process.
• 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
A Tree of Processes in Linux
Process Creation

When a process creates a new process, two possibilities exist in term of

execution.
• Execution Option
• Parent and child process execute concurrently
• Parent wait until children process terminate
• 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
C Program Forking Separate Process
Process Termination
• Process executes last statement and then asks the operating system
to delete it using the exit() system call.
• Returns status value( typically an integer) 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
 Interprocess Communication
• Processes within a system may be independent or cooperating.
• Independent process cannot affect or be affected by other process.
• Cooperating process can affect or be affected by other processes, including
sharing data
Advantages of 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
(b) Shared memory. (a) Message passing.
Producer-Consumer Problem
• Paradigm for cooperating processes:
• producer process produces information that is consumed by a consumer
process
• Two variations:
• unbounded-buffer places no practical limit on the size of the buffer:
• Producer never waits
• Consumer waits if there is no buffer to consume
• bounded-buffer assumes that there is a fixed buffer size
• Producer must wait if all buffers are full
• Consumer waits if there is no buffer to consume
 IPC – 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.
• Synchronization is discussed in great details in Chapters 6 & 7.
 Interprocess Communication –
Message Passing
• 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) – message size fixed or variable
• receive(message)
• If P and Q wish to communicate, they need to:
• establish a communication link between them
• exchange messages via send/receive
• Implementation of communication link
• physical (e.g., shared memory, hardware bus)
• logical (e.g., logical properties)
 Implementation of Communication Link

• Physical:
• Shared memory
• Hardware bus
• Network
• Logical:
• Direct or indirect
• Synchronous or asynchronous
• Automatic or explicit buffering
 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
 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
 Indirect Communication
• Operations
• create a new mailbox
• 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
 Indirect Communication (Cont.)
• Mailbox sharing
• P1, P2, and P3 share mailbox A
• P1, sends; P2 and P3 receive
• Who gets the message?
• Solutions
• Allow a link to be associated with at most two processes
• Allow only one process at a time to execute a receive
operation.
 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
Producer-Consumer: Message Passing

• Producer
message next_produced;
while (true) {
/* produce an item in
next_produced */
send(next_produced);
}

• Consumer
message next_consumed;
while (true) {
receive(next_consumed)
/* consume the item in
next_consumed */
}
 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
Communications in Client-Server Systems

• Sockets
• Remote Procedure Calls
 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 161.25.19.8:1625 refers to port 1625 on host
161.25.19.8
• Communication consists between a pair of sockets
All ports below 1024 are well known, used for standard
services(e.g FTP→ 21, HTTP →80,file download →23,Email send → 25)
• Special IP address 127.0.0.1 (loopback) to refer to system on
which process is running
Socket Communication
Remote Procedure Calls
• Remote procedure call (RPC) abstracts procedure calls
between processes on networked systems
• Again uses ports for service differentiation
• Stubs – client-side proxy for the actual procedure on
the server
• The client-side stub locates the server and marshalls
the parameters
• The server-side stub receives this message, unpacks
the marshalled parameters, and performs the
procedure on the server
• On Windows, stub code compile from specification
written in Microsoft Interface Definition Language
(MIDL)
Remote Procedure Calls (Cont.)
• Data representation handled via External Data
Representation (XDL) format to account for
different architectures
• Big-endian and little-endian
• Remote communication has more failure
scenarios than local
• Messages can be delivered exactly once rather than at
most once
• OS typically provides a rendezvous (or
matchmaker) service to connect client and server
Execution of RPC