Process

• A process is basically a program in execution. The execution of a

process must progress in a sequential fashion.
• To put it in simple terms, we write our computer programs in a text
file and when we execute this program, it becomes a process which
performs all the tasks mentioned in the program.
• When a program is loaded into the memory and it becomes a process,
it can be divided into four sections ─ stack, heap, text and data.
Stack
The process Stack contains the temporary data such as
method/function parameters, return address and local
variables.

Heap
This is dynamically allocated memory to a process during its
run time.

Text
This includes the current activity represented by the value of
Program Counter and the contents of the processor's registers.

Data
This section contains the global and static variables.
 Program
• A program is a piece of code which may be a single line or millions of lines. A
computer program is usually written by a computer programmer in a
programming language. For example, a simple program written in C
programming language
• A computer program is a collection of instructions that performs a specific task
when executed by a computer. When we compare a program with a process, we
can conclude that a process is a dynamic instance of a computer program.
• A part of a computer program that performs a well-defined task is known as an
algorithm. A collection of computer programs, libraries and related data are
referred to as a software.
#include <stdio.h>
int main()
{
printf("Hello, World! \n");
return 0;
}
Process Life Cycle

• When a process executes, it passes through different states. These

stages may differ in different operating systems, and the names of
these states are also not standardized.
• In general, a process can have one of the following five states at a
time.
 Start
This is the initial state when a process is first started/created.

Ready
The process is waiting to be assigned to a processor. Ready
processes are waiting to have the processor allocated to them by
the operating system so that they can run. Process may come into
this state after Start state or while running it by but interrupted
by the scheduler to assign CPU to some other process.
Running
Once the process has been assigned to a processor by the OS
Process Life Cycle scheduler, the process state is set to running and the processor
executes its instructions.
Waiting
Process moves into the waiting state if it needs to wait for a
resource, such as waiting for user input, or waiting for a file to
become available.
Terminated or Exit
Once the process finishes its execution, or it is terminated by the
operating system, it is moved to the terminated state where it
waits to be removed from main memory.
Process Life Cycle
Process Control Block (PCB)

• A Process Control Block is a data structure maintained by the

Operating System for every process. The PCB is identified by an
integer process ID (PID). A PCB keeps all the information needed to
keep track of a process
Process Control Block (PCB)
Process State
The current state of the process i.e., whether it is ready, running, waiting, or whatever.

Process privileges
This is required to allow/disallow access to system resources.
Process ID
Unique identification for each of the process in the operating system.
Pointer
A pointer to parent process.
Program Counter
Program Counter is a pointer to the address of the next instruction to be executed for this process.
CPU registers
Various CPU registers where process need to be stored for execution for running state.
CPU Scheduling Information
Process priority and other scheduling information which is required to schedule the process.
Memory management information
This includes the information of page table, memory limits, Segment table depending on memory used by the operating
system.
Accounting information
This includes the amount of CPU used for process execution, time limits, execution ID etc.
IO status information
This includes a list of I/O devices allocated to the process.
Process Control Block (PCB)
 Process Scheduling
• The process scheduling is the activity of the process manager that
handles the removal of the running process from the CPU and the
selection of another process on the basis of a particular strategy.

• Process scheduling is an essential part of a Multiprogramming

operating systems. Such operating systems allow more than one
process to be loaded into the executable memory at a time and the
loaded process shares the CPU using time multiplexing.
Process Scheduling Queues
• The OS maintains all PCBs in Process Scheduling Queues. The OS maintains a
separate queue for each of the process states and PCBs of all processes in the
same execution state are placed in the same queue. When the state of a
process is changed, its PCB is unlinked from its current queue and moved to its
new state queue.
• The Operating System maintains the following important process scheduling
queues
• Job queue − This queue keeps all the processes in the system.
• Ready queue − This queue keeps a set of all processes residing in main
memory, ready and waiting to execute. A new process is always put in this
queue.
• Device queues − The processes which are blocked due to unavailability of an
I/O device constitute this queue.
The OS can use different policies to manage each queue (FIFO, Round
Robin, Priority, etc.). The OS scheduler determines how to move processes
between the ready and run queues which can only have one entry per
processor core on the system; in the above diagram, it has been merged
with the CPU.
 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.
• Synchronization is discussed in great details
in Chapter 5.
 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)
• receive(message)

• The message size is either fixed or variable

Message Passing (Cont.)

• If processes P and Q wish to communicate, they need to:

• Establish a communication link between them
• Exchange messages via send/receive
• Implementation issues:
• How are links established?
• Can a link be associated with more than two processes?
• How many links can there be between every pair of
communicating processes?
• What is the capacity of a link?
• Is the size of a message that the link can accommodate fixed or
variable?
• Is a link unidirectional or bi-directional?
Message Passing (Cont.)

• Implementation of communication link

• Physical:
• Shared memory
• Hardware bus
• Network
• Logical:
• Direct or indirect
• Synchronous or asynchronous
• Automatic or explicit buffering
 Two-State Process Model
• Two-state process model refers to running and non-running states which are described
below

Running
When a new process is created, it enters into the system as in the running state.

Not Running
Processes that are not running are kept in queue, waiting for their turn to
execute. Each entry in the queue is a pointer to a particular process. Queue is
implemented by using linked list. Use of dispatcher is as follows. When a process
is interrupted, that process is transferred in the waiting queue. If the process has
completed or aborted, the process is discarded. In either case, the dispatcher
then selects a process from the queue to execute.
Schedulers

• Schedulers are special system software which handle process

scheduling in various ways. Their main task is to select the jobs to be
submitted into the system and to decide which process to run.
Schedulers are of three types −
• Long-Term Scheduler
• Short-Term Scheduler
• Medium-Term Scheduler
 Long Term Scheduler
• It is also called a job scheduler. 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.
• The primary objective of the job scheduler is to provide a balanced mix of jobs,
such as I/O bound and processor bound. It also controls the degree of
multiprogramming. If the degree of multiprogramming is stable, then the average
rate of process creation must be equal to the average departure rate of processes
leaving the system.
• On some systems, the long-term scheduler may not be available or minimal. Time-
sharing operating systems have no long term scheduler. When a process changes
the state from new to ready, then there is use of long-term scheduler.
Short Term Scheduler

• It is also called as CPU scheduler. Its main objective is to increase

system performance in accordance with the chosen set of criteria. It is
the change of ready state to running state of the process. CPU
scheduler selects a process among the processes that are ready to
execute and allocates CPU to one of them.
• 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.
Medium Term Scheduler

• Medium-term scheduling is a part of swapping. It removes the

processes from the memory. It reduces the degree of
multiprogramming. The medium-term scheduler is in-charge of
handling the swapped out-processes.
• A running process may become suspended if it makes an I/O request. A
suspended processes cannot make any progress towards completion. In
this condition, to remove the process from memory and make space for
other processes, the suspended process is moved to the secondary
storage. This process is called swapping, and the process is said to be
swapped out or rolled out. Swapping may be necessary to improve the
process mix.
Comparison among Scheduler
Long-Term Scheduler Short-Term Scheduler Medium-Term Scheduler
It is a job scheduler It is a CPU scheduler It is a process swapping
scheduler.
Speed is lesser than short term Speed is fastest among other Speed is in between both
scheduler two short- and long-term scheduler.

It controls the degree of It provides lesser control over It reduces the degree of
multiprogramming degree of multiprogramming multiprogramming.

It is almost absent or minimal It is also minimal in time It is a part of Time sharing

in time sharing system sharing system systems.

It selects processes from pool It can re-introduce the process

and loads them into memory It selects those processes into memory and execution
for execution which are ready to execute can be continued.
 Context Switch
• A context switch is the mechanism to store and restore the state or
context of a CPU in Process Control block so that a process execution
can be resumed from the same point at a later time. Using this
technique, a context switcher enables multiple processes to share a
single CPU. Context switching is an essential part of a multitasking
operating system features.
• When the scheduler switches the CPU from executing one process to
execute another, the state from the current running process is stored
into the process control block. After this, the state for the process to
run next is loaded from its own PCB and used to set the PC, registers,
etc. At that point, the second process can start executing.
• Context switches are computationally intensive since register and memory state
must be saved and restored. To avoid the amount of context switching time, some
hardware systems employ two or more sets of processor registers. When the process
is switched, the following information is stored for later use.
• Program Counter
• Scheduling information
• Base and limit register value
• Currently used register
• Changed State
• I/O State information
• Accounting information
Operating System Scheduling algorithms
• A Process Scheduler schedules different processes to be assigned to the CPU based
on particular scheduling algorithms. There are six popular process scheduling
algorithms which we are going to discuss in this chapter −
1. First-Come, First-Served (FCFS) Scheduling
2. Shortest-Job-Next (SJN) Scheduling
3. Priority Scheduling
4. Shortest Remaining Time
5. Round Robin(RR) Scheduling
6. Multiple-Level Queues Scheduling
• These algorithms are either non-preemptive or preemptive. Non-preemptive
algorithms are designed so that once a process enters the running state, it cannot be
preempted until it completes its allotted time, whereas the preemptive scheduling is
based on priority where a scheduler may preempt a low priority running process
anytime when a high priority process enters into a ready state.
First Come First Serve (FCFS)

• Jobs are executed on first come, first serve basis.

• It is a non-preemptive, pre-emptive scheduling algorithm.
• Easy to understand and implement.
• Its implementation is based on FIFO queue.
• Poor in performance as average wait time is high.
First Come First Serve (FCFS)
First Come First Serve (FCFS)

Wait time of each process is as follow −

Process Wait Time : Service Time - Arrival Time

P0 0-0=0
P1 5-1=4
P2
P3

Average Wait Time:

Shortest Job Next (SJN)
• This is also known as shortest job first, or SJF
• This is a non-preemptive, pre-emptive scheduling algorithm.
• Best approach to minimize waiting time.
• Easy to implement in Batch systems where required CPU time is
known in advance.
• Impossible to implement in interactive systems where required CPU
time is not known.
• The processer should know in advance how much time process will
take.
Shortest Job Next (SJN)
Process Arrival Time Execution Time Service Time
P0 0 5 0
P1 1 3 5
P2 2 8 14
P3 3 6 8
 Process Waiting Time
P0 0-0=0
P1 5-1=4

P3
Priority Based Scheduling

• Priority scheduling is a non-preemptive algorithm and one of the

most common scheduling algorithms in batch systems.
• Each process is assigned a priority. Process with highest priority is to
be executed first and so on.
• Processes with same priority are executed on first come first served
basis.
• Priority can be decided based on memory requirements, time
requirements or any other resource requirement.
Priority Based Scheduling
Priority Based Scheduling

Process Waiting Time

P0 0-0=0
P1
P2
P3 5-3=2
Shortest Remaining Time

• Shortest remaining time (SRT) is the preemptive version of the SJN

algorithm.
• The processor is allocated to the job closest to completion but it can
be preempted by a newer ready job with shorter time to completion.
• Impossible to implement in interactive systems where required CPU
time is not known.
• It is often used in batch environments where short jobs need to give
preference.
Round Robin Scheduling

• Round Robin is the preemptive process scheduling algorithm.

• Each process is provided a fix time to execute, it is called a quantum.
• Once a process is executed for a given time period, it is preempted
and other process executes for a given time period.
• Context switching is used to save states of preempted processes.
Round Robin Scheduling