Module 2

Processes
 Outline

• Processes
• Process Scheduling algorithms
• Inter process Communication
• Examples of IPC Systems
• Threads
• Multi core Programming
• Multithreading Models
• Thread Libraries
• Thread issues
 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
Memory Layout of a C Program
 Process State

• As a process executes, it changes state

• New: The process is being created
• Running: Instructions are being executed
• Waiting: The process is waiting for some event to occur
• Ready: The process is waiting to be assigned to a processor
• 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
 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
• Ready queue – set of all processes residing in main
memory, ready and waiting to execute
• Wait queues – set of processes waiting for an event (i.e.,
I/O)
• Processes migrate among the various queues
Ready and Wait Queues
Representation of Process Scheduling
CPU Switch From Process to Process
A context switch occurs when the CPU switches from
one process to another.
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 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
CPU Scheduling
Basic Concepts

• Maximum CPU utilization

obtained with multiprogramming
• CPU–I/O Burst Cycle – Process
execution consists of a cycle of
CPU execution and I/O wait
• CPU burst followed by I/O
burst
• CPU burst distribution is of main
concern
Histogram of CPU-burst Times

Large number of short bursts

Small number of longer bursts

CPU Scheduler
• The CPU scheduler selects from among the processes in
ready queue, and allocates a CPU core to one of them
• Queue may be ordered in various ways
• CPU scheduling decisions may take place when a process:
1. Switches from running to waiting state
2. Switches from running to ready state
3. Switches from waiting to ready
4. Terminates
• For situations 1 and 4, there is no choice in terms of
scheduling. A new process (if one exists in the ready queue)
must be selected for execution.
• For situations 2 and 3, however, there is a choice.
 Preemptive and Nonpreemptive
Scheduling
• When scheduling takes place only under circumstances 1
and 4, the scheduling scheme is nonpreemptive.
• Otherwise, it is preemptive.
• Under Nonpreemptive scheduling, once the CPU has been
allocated to a process, the process keeps the CPU until it
releases it either by terminating or by switching to the
waiting state.
• Virtually all modern operating systems including Windows,
MacOS, Linux, and UNIX use preemptive scheduling
algorithms.
 Preemptive Scheduling and Race
Conditions
• Preemptive scheduling can result in race conditions
when data are shared among several processes.
• Consider the case of two processes that share data.
While one process is updating the data, it is
preempted so that the second process can run. The
second process then tries to read the data, which are
in an inconsistent state.
• This issue will be explored in detail in Chapter 6.
Dispatcher
• Dispatcher module gives control of the
CPU to the process selected by the CPU
scheduler; this involves:
• Switching context
• Switching to user mode
• Jumping to the proper location in the user
program to restart that program
• Dispatch latency – time it takes
for the dispatcher to stop one process
and start another running
 Scheduling Criteria

• CPU utilization – keep the CPU as busy as possible

• Throughput – # of processes that complete their
execution per time unit
• Turnaround time – amount of time to execute a particular
process
• Waiting time – amount of time a process has been waiting
in the ready queue
• Response time – amount of time it takes from when a
request was submitted until the first response is
produced.
 Scheduling Algorithm Optimization
Criteria
• Max CPU utilization
• Max throughput
• Min turnaround time
• Min waiting time
• Min response time
 First- Come, First-Served (FCFS) Scheduling

Process Burst Time

P1 24
P2 3
P3 3
• Suppose that the processes arrive in the order: P1 , P2 , P3
The Gantt Chart for the schedule is:

P1 P2 P3
0 24 27 30

• Waiting time for P1 = 0; P2 = 24; P3 = 27

• Average waiting time: (0 + 24 + 27)/3 = 17
 FCFS Scheduling (Cont.)

Suppose that the processes arrive in the order:

P2 , P3 , P1
• The Gantt chart for the schedule is:

P2 P3 P1
0 3 6 30

• Waiting time for P1 = 6; P2 = 0; P3 = 3

• Average waiting time: (6 + 0 + 3)/3 = 3
• Much better than previous case
• Convoy effect - short process behind long process
• Consider one CPU-bound and many I/O-bound processes
 Shortest-Job-First (SJF) Scheduling

• Associate with each process the length of its next CPU

burst
• Use these lengths to schedule the process with the shortest time
• SJF is optimal – gives minimum average waiting time for a
given set of processes
• Preemptive version called shortest-remaining-
time-first
• How do we determine the length of the next CPU burst?
• Could ask the user
• Estimate
 Example of SJF

Process Burst Time

P1 6
P2 8
P3 7
P4 3

• SJF scheduling
P
chart
P P3 P2
4 1

0 3 9 16 24

• Average waiting time = (3 + 16 + 9 + 0) / 4 = 7

 Determining Length of Next CPU Burst

• Can only estimate the length – should be similar to the previous

one
• Then pick process with shortest predicted next CPU burst
• Can be done by using the length of previous CPU bursts, using
exponential averaging

• Commonly, α set to ½
 Examples of Exponential
Averaging
•  =0
• n+1 = n
• Recent history does not count
•  =1
• n+1 =  tn
• Only the actual last CPU burst counts
• If we expand the formula, we get:
n+1 =  tn+(1 - ) tn -1 + …+(1 -  )j  tn -j + …+(1 -  )n +1 0

• Since both  and (1 - ) are less than or equal to 1, each successor

predecessor term has less weight than its predecessor
Prediction of the Length of the Next CPU Burst
 Shortest Remaining Time First Scheduling

• Preemptive version of SJN

• Whenever a new process arrives in the ready queue, the
decision on which process to schedule next is redone using
the SJN algorithm.
• Is SRT more “optimal” than SJN in terms of the minimum
average waiting time for a given set of processes?
 Example of Shortest-remaining-time-
first
• Now we add the concepts of varying arrival times and preemption
to the analysis
Process i Arrival TimeT Burst Time
P1 0 8
P2 1 4
P3 2 9
P4 3 5
• Preemptive SJF Gantt Chart
P1 P2 P4 P1 P3
0 1 5 10 17 26

• Average waiting time = [(10-1)+(1-1)+(17-2)+(5-3)]/4 = 26/4 = 6.5

Round Robin (RR)
• Each process gets a small unit of CPU time (time quantum
q), usually 10-100 milliseconds. After this time has elapsed, the
process is preempted and added to the end of the ready
queue.
• If there are n processes in the ready queue and the time
quantum is q, then each process gets 1/n of the CPU time in
chunks of at most q time units at once. No process waits more
than (n-1)q time units.
• Timer interrupts every quantum to schedule next process
• Performance
• q large  FIFO (FCFS)
• q small  RR
• Note that q must be large with respect to context switch,
otherwise overhead is too high
Example of RR with Time Quantum = 4

Process Burst Time

P1 24
P2 3
P3 3
• The Gantt chart is:
P1 P2 P3 P1 P1 P1 P1 P1
0 4 7 10 14 18 22 26 30

• Typically, higher average turnaround than SJF, but better

response
• q should be large compared to context switch time
• q usually 10 milliseconds to 100 milliseconds,
• Context switch < 10 microseconds
Time Quantum and Context Switch
Time
Turnaround Time Varies With The Time Quantum

80% of CPU bursts should

be shorter than q
 Priority Scheduling

• A priority number (integer) is associated with each process

• The CPU is allocated to the process with the highest priority

(smallest integer  highest priority)
• Preemptive
• Nonpreemptive

• SJF is priority scheduling where priority is the inverse of predicted

next CPU burst time

• Problem  Starvation – low priority processes may never

execute

• Solution  Aging – as time progresses increase the priority of the

process
 Example of Priority Scheduling

Process Burst Time Priority

P1 10 3
P2 1 1
P3 2 4
P4 1 5
P5 5 2

• Priority scheduling Gantt Chart

• Average waiting time = 8.2

 Priority Scheduling w/ Round-
Robin
• Run the process with the highest priority. Processes with the same
priority run round-robin
• Example:
Process a Burst Time Priority
P1 4 3
P2 5 2
P3 8 2
P4 7 1
P5 3 3
• Gantt Chart with time quantum = 2
 Algorithm Evaluation
• How to select CPU-scheduling algorithm for an OS?
• Determine criteria, then evaluate algorithms
• Deterministic modeling
• Type of analytic evaluation
• Takes a particular predetermined workload and defines the
performance of each algorithm for that workload
• Consider 5 processes arriving at time 0:
 Deterministic Evaluation

• For each algorithm, calculate minimum average waiting time

• Simple and fast, but requires exact numbers for input,
applies only to those inputs
• FCS is 28ms:

• Non-preemptive SFJ is 13ms:

• RR is 23ms:
Operations on Processes

• System must provide mechanisms for:

• Process creation
• Process termination
Process Creation

• 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
• Execution options
• Parent and children execute concurrently
• Parent waits until children terminate
 Process Creation (Cont.)
• 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
• Parent process calls wait()waiting for the child to terminate
A Tree of Processes in Linux
Process Termination
• Process executes last statement and then asks the operating
system to delete it using the exit() system call.
• Returns status data 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
 Multiprocess Architecture – Chrome
Browser
• Many web browsers ran as single process (some still do)
• If one web site causes trouble, entire browser can hang or crash
• Google Chrome Browser is multiprocess with 3 different types of
processes:
• Browser process manages user interface, disk and network I/O
• Renderer process renders web pages, deals with HTML, Javascript. A
new renderer created for each website opened
• Runs in sandbox restricting disk and network I/O, minimizing effect of security
exploits
• Plug-in process for each type of plug-in
 Interprocess Communication

• Processes within a system may be independent or cooperating

• Cooperating process can affect or be affected by other processes,
including sharing data
• 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
(a) Shared memory. (b) 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.
 Bounded-Buffer – Shared-Memory Solution

• Shared data
#define BUFFER_SIZE 10
typedef struct {
. . .
} item;

item buffer[BUFFER_SIZE];
int in = 0;
int out = 0;

• Solution is correct, but can only use BUFFER_SIZE-1 elements

Producer Process – Shared Memory

item next_produced;

while (true) {
/* produce an item in next produced */
while (((in + 1) % BUFFER_SIZE) == out)
; /* do nothing */
buffer[in] = next_produced;
in = (in + 1) % BUFFER_SIZE;
}
Consumer Process – Shared
Memory
item next_consumed;

while (true) {
while (in == out)
; /* do nothing */
next_consumed = buffer[out];
out = (out + 1) % BUFFER_SIZE;

/* consume the item in next consumed */

}
What about Filling all the Buffers?
• Suppose that we wanted to provide a solution to the
consumer-producer problem that fills all the buffers.
• We can do so by having an integer counter that keeps track
of the number of full buffers.
• Initially, counter is set to 0.
• The integer counter is incremented by the producer after it
produces a new buffer.
• The integer counter is and is decremented by the consumer
after it consumes a buffer.
Producer

while (true) {
/* produce an item in next produced */

while (counter == BUFFER_SIZE)

; /* do nothing */
buffer[in] = next_produced;
in = (in + 1) % BUFFER_SIZE;
counter++;
}
Consumer

while (true) {
while (counter == 0)
; /* do nothing */
next_consumed = buffer[out];
out = (out + 1) % BUFFER_SIZE;
counter--;
/* consume the item in next consumed */
}
Race Condition
• counter++ could be implemented as

register1 = counter
register1 = register1 + 1
counter = register1
• counter-- could be implemented as

register2 = counter
register2 = register2 - 1
counter = register2

• Consider this execution interleaving with “count = 5” initially:

S0: producer execute register1 = counter {register1 = 5}
S1: producer execute register1 = register1 + 1 {register1 = 6}
S2: consumer execute register2 = counter {register2 = 5}
S3: consumer execute register2 = register2 – 1 {register2 = 4}
S4: producer execute counter = register1 {counter = 6 }
S5: consumer execute counter = register2 {counter = 4}
Race Condition (Cont.)
• Question – why was there no race
condition in the first solution (where
at most N – 1) buffers can be filled?
• More in Chapter 6.
 IPC – Message Passing

• 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?
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 (Cont.)
• Operations
• Create a new mailbox (port)
• Send and receive messages through mailbox
• Delete 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
• Allow the system to select arbitrarily the receiver. Sender is
notified who the receiver was.
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
• Different combinations possible
• If both send and receive are blocking, we have a rendezvous
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
Examples of IPC Systems - POSIX

• POSIX Shared Memory

• Process first creates shared memory segment
shm_fd = shm_open(name, O CREAT | O RDWR, 0666);
• Also used to open an existing segment
• Set the size of the object
ftruncate(shm_fd, 4096);
• Use mmap() to memory-map a file pointer to the shared memory object
• Reading and writing to shared memory is done by using the pointer
returned by mmap().
Threads
Motivation

• Most modern applications are multithreaded

• Threads run within application
• Multiple tasks with the application can be implemented by
separate threads (to make use of mul. cpu core for ||
processing )
• Update display
• Fetch data
• Spell checking
• Answer a network request
• Process creation is heavy-weight while thread creation is
light-weight
• Can simplify code, increase efficiency
• Kernels are generally multithreaded
Single and Multithreaded Processes
Multithreaded Server Architecture
Benefits

• Responsiveness – may allow continued execution if part of

process is blocked, especially important for user interfaces
• Resource Sharing – threads share resources of process, easier
than shared memory or message passing
• Economy – cheaper than process creation, thread switching
lower overhead than context switching
• Scalability – process can take advantage of multicore
architectures
 Multicore Programming
• Multicore or multiprocessor systems puts pressure on
programmers, challenges include:
• Dividing activities
• Balance
• Data splitting
• Data dependency
• Testing and debugging
• Parallelism implies a system can perform more than one task
simultaneously
• Concurrency supports more than one task making progress
• Single processor / core, scheduler providing concurrency
Concurrency vs. Parallelism
 Concurrent execution on single-core system:

 Parallelism on a multi-core system:

 Multicore Programming

• Types of parallelism
• Data parallelism – distributes subsets of the same data across
multiple cores, same operation on each
• Task parallelism – distributing threads across cores, each
thread performing unique operation
Data and Task Parallelism
Amdahl’s Law
• Identifies performance gains from adding additional cores to an application
that has both serial and parallel components
• S is serial portion
• N processing cores

• That is, if application is 75% parallel / 25% serial, moving from 1 to 2 cores
results in speedup of 1.6 times
• As N approaches infinity, speedup approaches 1 / S

Serial portion of an application has disproportionate effect on

performance gained by adding additional cores

• But does the law take into account contemporary multicore systems?
Amdahl’s Law
 User Threads and Kernel Threads

• User threads - management done by user-level threads library

• Three primary thread libraries:
• POSIX Pthreads
• Windows threads
• Java threads
• Kernel threads - Supported by the Kernel
• Examples – virtually all general-purpose operating systems, including:
• Windows
• Linux
• Mac OS X
• iOS
• Android
User and Kernel Threads
Multithreading Models

• Many-to-One
• One-to-One
• Many-to-Many
Many-to-One

• Many user-level threads mapped to single kernel thread

• One thread blocking causes all to block
• Multiple threads may not run in parallel on multicore system
because only one may be in kernel at a time
• Few systems currently use this model
• Examples:
• Solaris Green Threads
• GNU Portable Threads
One-to-One

• Each user-level thread maps to kernel thread

• Creating a user-level thread creates a kernel thread
• More concurrency than many-to-one
• Number of threads per process sometimes restricted due to
overhead
• Examples
• Windows
• Linux
Many-to-Many Model
• Allows many user level threads to be mapped to many kernel
threads
• Allows the operating system to create a sufficient number of
kernel threads
• Windows with the ThreadFiber package
• Otherwise not very common
Two-level Model
• Similar to M:M, except that it allows a user thread to be bound to
kernel thread
Thread Libraries

• Thread library provides programmer with API for creating and

managing threads
• Two primary ways of implementing
• Library entirely in user space
• Kernel-level library supported by the OS
Pthreads

• May be provided either as user-level or kernel-level

• A POSIX standard (IEEE 1003.1c) API for thread creation and
synchronization
• Specification, not implementation
• API specifies behavior of the thread library, implementation is up
to development of the library
• Common in UNIX operating systems (Linux & Mac OS X)
Pthreads Example
Pthreads Example (Cont.)
 Pthreads Code for Joining 10
Threads

Operating System Concepts – 9 th Edition 4. 21 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013

 Operating System Examples

• Windows Threads
• Linux Threads
Windows Threads
• Windows API – primary API for Windows applications
• Implements the one-to-one mapping, kernel-level
• Each thread contains
• A thread id
• Register set representing state of processor
• Separate user and kernel stacks for when thread runs in user mode or
kernel mode
• Private data storage area used by run-time libraries and dynamic link
libraries (DLLs)
• The register set, stacks, and private storage area are known as the
context of the thread
Linux Threads
• Linux refers to them as tasks rather than threads
• Thread creation is done through clone() system call
• clone() allows a child task to share the address space of the
parent task (process)
• Flags control behavior

• struct task_struct points to process data structures

(shared or unique)