‫الجامعة السعودية االلكترونية‬

‫الجامعة السعودية االلكترونية‬

‫‪26/12/2021‬‬
College of Computing and Informatics
OPERATING SYSTEMS
Operating Systems
Module 10

Chapter 12: I/O Systems

CONTENTS

 I/O Hardware

 Application I/O Interface

 Kernel I/O Subsystem

 Transforming I/O Requests to Hardware Operations

WEEKLY LEARNING OUTCOMES

 Explore the structure of an operating system’s I/O

subsystem

 Discuss the principles and complexities of I/O hardware

 Explain the performance aspects of I/O hardware and

software
 INTRODUCTION
I/O management is a major component of operating system design and operation
Important aspect of computer operation
I/O devices vary greatly
Various methods to control them
Performance management
New types of devices frequent
Ports, busses, device controllers connect to various devices
Device drivers encapsulate device details
Present uniform device-access interface to I/O subsystem
I/O HARDWARE
Incredible variety of I/O devices
Storage
Transmission
Human-interface
Common concepts – signals from I/O devices interface with computer
Port – connection point for device
Bus - daisy chain or shared direct access
PCI bus common in PCs and servers, PCI Express (PCIe)
expansion bus connects relatively slow devices
Serial-attached SCSI (SAS) common disk interface
 I/O HARDWARE
Controller (host adapter) – electronics that operate port, bus, device
Sometimes integrated
Sometimes separate circuit board (host adapter)
Contains processor, microcode, private memory, bus controller, etc.
Some talk to per-device controller with bus controller, microcode, memory, etc.
A TYPICAL BUS STRUCTURE
 I/O HARDWARE
Fibre channel (FC) is complex controller, usually separate circuit board (host-bus
adapter, HBA) plugging into bus
I/O instructions control devices
Devices usually have registers where device driver places commands, addresses,
and data to write, or read data from registers after command execution
Data-in register, data-out register, status register, control register
Typically 1-4 bytes, or FIFO buffer
 I/O HARDWARE
• The data-in register is read by the host to get input.
• The data-out register is written by the host to send output.
• The status register contains bits that can be read by the host. These bits indicate
states, such as whether the current command has completed, whether a byte is
available to be read from the data-in register, and whether a device error has
occurred
• The control register can be written by the host to start a command or to change
the mode of a device.
I/O HARDWARE
Devices have addresses, used by
Direct I/O instructions
Memory-mapped I/O
Device data and command registers mapped to processor address space
Especially for large address spaces (graphics)
I/O HARDWARE
Device I/O Port Locations on PCs (partial)
POLLING
For each byte of I/O
Read busy bit from status register until 0
Host sets read or write bit and if write copies data into data-out register
Host sets command-ready bit
Controller sets busy bit, executes transfer
Controller clears busy bit, error bit, command-ready bit when transfer done
Step 1 is busy-wait cycle to wait for I/O from device
Reasonable if device is fast
But inefficient if device slow
CPU switches to other tasks?
But if miss a cycle data overwritten / lost
 POLLING
1. The host repeatedly reads the busy bit until that bit becomes clear.
2. The host sets the write bit in the command register and writes a byte
into the data-out register.
3. The host sets the command-ready bit.
4. When the controller notices that the command-ready bit is set, it sets
the busy bit.
5. The controller reads the command register and sees the write
command. It reads the data-out register to get the byte and does the I/O
to the device.
6. The controller clears the command-ready bit, clears the error bit in the
status register to indicate that the device I/O succeeded, and clears the
busy bit to indicate that it is finished
INTERRUPTS
Polling can happen in 3 instruction cycles
Read status, logical-and to extract status bit, branch if not zero
How to be more efficient if non-zero infrequently?
CPU Interrupt-request line triggered by I/O device
Checked by processor after each instruction
Interrupt handler receives interrupts
Maskable to ignore or delay some interrupts
Interrupt vector to dispatch interrupt to correct handler
Context switch at start and end
Based on priority
Some nonmaskable
Interrupt chaining if more than one device at same interrupt number
INTERRUPT DRIVEN I/O CYCLE
INTERRUPTS
Interrupt mechanism also used for exceptions
Terminate process, crash system due to hardware error
Page fault executes when memory access error
System call executes via trap to trigger kernel to execute request
Multi-CPU systems can process interrupts concurrently
If operating system designed to handle it
Used for time-sensitive processing, frequent, must be fast
 INTERRUPTS HANDLING FEATURES
1. We need the ability to defer interrupt handling during critical processing.
2. We need an efficient way to dispatch to the proper interrupt handler for a
device without first polling all the devices to see which one raised the interrupt.
3. We need multilevel interrupts, so that the operating system can distinguish
between high- and low-priority interrupts and can respond with the appropriate
degree of urgency when there are multiple concurrent interrupts.
4. We need a way for an instruction to get the operating system’s attention
directly (separately from I/O requests), for activities such as page faults and
errors such as division by zero. As we shall see, this task is accomplished by
“traps.”
 INTERRUPTS
Intel Pentium Processor Event-Vector Table
DIRECT MEMORY ACCESS
Used to avoid programmed I/O (one byte at a time) for large data movement
Requires DMA controller
Bypasses CPU to transfer data directly between I/O device and memory
OS writes DMA command block into memory
Source and destination addresses
Read or write mode
Count of bytes
Writes location of command block to DMA controller
Bus mastering of DMA controller – grabs bus from CPU
Cycle stealing from CPU but still much more efficient
When done, interrupts to signal completion
Version that is aware of virtual addresses can be even more efficient - DVMA
DIRECT MEMORY ACCESS STEPS
APPLICATION I/O INTERFACE
I/O system calls encapsulate device behaviors in generic classes
Device-driver layer hides differences among I/O controllers from kernel
New devices talking already-implemented protocols need no extra work
Each OS has its own I/O subsystem structures and device driver frameworks
Devices vary in many dimensions
Character-stream or block
Sequential or random-access
Synchronous or asynchronous (or both)
Sharable or dedicated
Speed of operation
read-write, read only, or write only
 APPLICATION I/O INTERFACE
• Character-stream or block. A character-stream device transfers bytes one by one,
whereas a block device transfers a block of bytes as a unit.
• Sequential or random access. A sequential device transfers data in a fixed order
determined by the device, whereas the user of a random-access device can instruct
the device to seek to any of the available data storage locations.
• Synchronous or asynchronous. A synchronous device performs data transfers
with predictable response times, in coordination with other aspects of the system.
An asynchronous device exhibits irregular or unpredictable response times not
coordinated with other computer events.
 APPLICATION I/O INTERFACE
• Sharable or dedicated. A sharable device can be used concurrently by several
processes or threads; a dedicated device cannot.
• Speed of operation. Device speeds range from a few bytes per second to
gigabytes per second.
• Read–write, read only, write once. Some devices perform both input and output,
but others support only one data transfer direction. Some allow data to be modified
after write, but others can be written only once and are read-only thereafter
KERNEL I/O STRUCTURE
CHARACTERISTICS OF I/O DEVICES
 CHARACTERISTICS OF I/O DEVICES
Subtleties of devices handled by device drivers
Broadly I/O devices can be grouped by the OS into
Block I/O
Character I/O (Stream)
Memory-mapped file access
Network sockets
For direct manipulation of I/O device specific characteristics, usually an escape / back door
Unix ioctl() call to send arbitrary bits to a device control register and data to device data register
UNIX and Linux use tuple of “major” and “minor” device numbers to identify type and instance of
devices (here major 8 and minors 0-4)
% ls –l /dev/sda*
BLOCK AND CHARACTER DEVICES
Block devices include disk drives
Commands include read, write, seek
Raw I/O, direct I/O, or file-system access
Memory-mapped file access possible
File mapped to virtual memory and clusters brought via demand paging
DMA
Character devices include keyboards, mice, serial ports
Commands include get(), put()
Libraries layered on top allow line editing
NETWORK DEVICES
Varying enough from block and character to have own interface
Linux, Unix, Windows and many others include socket interface
Separates network protocol from network operation
Includes select() functionality
Approaches vary widely (pipes, FIFOs, streams, queues, mailboxes)
CLOCKS AND TIMERS
Provide current time, elapsed time, timer
Normal resolution about 1/60 second
Some systems provide higher-resolution timers
Programmable interval timer used for timings, periodic interrupts
ioctl() (on UNIX) covers odd aspects of I/O such as clocks and timers
NON-BLOCKING AND ASYNCHRONOUS I/O
Blocking - process suspended until I/O completed
Easy to use and understand
Insufficient for some needs
Nonblocking - I/O call returns as much as available
User interface, data copy (buffered I/O)
Implemented via multi-threading
Returns quickly with count of bytes read or written
select() to find if data ready then read() or write() to transfer
Asynchronous - process runs while I/O executes
Difficult to use
I/O subsystem signals process when I/O completed
I/O METHODS

Synchronous Asynchronous
 VECTORED I/O
Vectored I/O allows one system call to perform multiple I/O operations
For example, Unix readve() accepts a vector of multiple buffers to read into or
write from
This scatter-gather method better than multiple individual I/O calls
Decreases context switching and system call overhead
Some versions provide atomicity
Avoid for example worry about multiple threads changing data as reads / writes
occurring
KERNEL I/O SUBSYSTEM
Scheduling
Some I/O request ordering via per-device queue
Some OSs try fairness
Some implement Quality Of Service (i.e. IPQOS)
Buffering - store data in memory while transferring between devices
To cope with device speed mismatch
To cope with device transfer size mismatch
To maintain “copy semantics”
Double buffering – two copies of the data
Kernel and user
Varying sizes
Full / being processed and not-full / being used
Copy-on-write can be used for efficiency in some cases
DEVICE STATUS TABLE
I/O DEVICE AND INTERFACE SPEEDS
KERNEL I/O SUBSYSTEM
Caching - faster device holding copy of data
Always just a copy
Key to performance
Sometimes combined with buffering
Spooling - hold output for a device
If device can serve only one request at a time
i.e., Printing
Device reservation - provides exclusive access to a device
System calls for allocation and de-allocation
Watch out for deadlock
 ERROR HANDLING
OS can recover from disk read, device unavailable, transient write failures
Retry a read or write, for example
Some systems more advanced – Solaris FMA, AIX
Track error frequencies, stop using device with increasing frequency of retry-able
errors
Most return an error number or code when I/O request fails
System error logs hold problem reports
I/O PROTECTION
User process may accidentally or purposefully attempt to disrupt normal
operation via illegal I/O instructions
All I/O instructions defined to be privileged
I/O must be performed via system calls
Memory-mapped and I/O port memory locations must be protected too
SYSTEM CALL
 POWER MANAGEMENT
Not strictly domain of I/O, but much is I/O related
Computers and devices use electricity, generate heat, frequently require cooling
OSes can help manage and improve use
Cloud computing environments move virtual machines between servers
Can end up evacuating whole systems and shutting them down
Mobile computing has power management as first class OS aspect
TRANSFORMING I/O REQUESTS TO HARDWARE
OPERATIONS
Consider reading a file from disk for a process:
Determine device holding file
Translate name to device representation
Physically read data from disk into buffer
Make data available to requesting process
Return control to process
LIFE CYCLE OF AN I/O REQUEST
 Main Reference
Chapter 12: I/O Systems
(Operating System Concepts by Silberschatz, Abraham, et
al. 10th ed., ISBN: 978-1-119-32091-3, 2018)
Additional References

Chapter 5.1
Chapter 5.2
Chapter 5.3
(Modern Operating Systems by Andrew S. Tanenbaum and Herbert Bos. 4th
ed., ISBN-10: 0-13-359162-X, ISBN-13: 978-0-13-359162-0, 2015)
sentation is mainly dependent on the textbook: Operating System Concepts by Silberschatz, Abrah
Thank You