CH 3

Chapter 3: Processes
Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
Chapter 3: Processes
Process Concept
Process Scheduling
Operations on Processes
Interprocess Communication
IPC in Shared-Memory Systems
IPC in Message-Passing Systems
Examples of IPC Systems
Communication in Client-Server Systems
Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.2 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
Objectives
Identify the separate components of a process and illustrate
how they are represented and scheduled in an operating
system.
Describe how processes are created and terminated in an
operating system, including developing programs using the
appropriate system calls that perform these operations.
Describe and contrast interprocess communication using
shared memory and message passing.
Design programs that uses pipes and POSIX shared memory
to perform interprocess communication.
Describe client-server communication using sockets and
remote procedure calls.
Design kernel modules that interact with the Linux operating
system.
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
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 executable file 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
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 Representation in Linux
Represented by the C structure task_struct
pid t_pid; /* process identifier */

long state; /* state of the process */
unsigned int time_slice /* scheduling information */
struct task_struct *parent;/* this process’s parent */
struct list_head children; /* this process’s children */
struct files_struct *files;/* list of open files */
struct mm_struct *mm; /* address space of this process */
Process Scheduling
Maximize CPU use, quickly switch processes onto CPU core

Process scheduler selects among available processes for
next execution on 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 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
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
A Tree of Processes in Linux
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() for the child to terminate
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 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.
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 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 */

}
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
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
Operations
create a new mailbox (port)
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
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 – Shared Memory
message next_produced;
while (true) {
/* produce an item in next_produced */
send(next_produced);
}
Consumer– Shared Memory
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
Pipes
Acts as a conduit allowing two processes to communicate
Issues:
Is communication unidirectional or bidirectional?
In the case of two-way communication, is it half or full-
duplex?
Must there exist a relationship (i.e., parent-child) between
the communicating processes?
Can the pipes be used over a network?
Ordinary pipes – cannot be accessed from outside the
process that created it. Typically, a parent process creates a
pipe and uses it to communicate with a child process that it
created.
Named pipes – can be accessed without a parent-child
relationship.
Ordinary Pipes
Ordinary Pipes allow communication in standard producer-consumer

style
Producer writes to one end (the write-end of the pipe)
Consumer reads from the other end (the read-end of the pipe)
Ordinary pipes are therefore unidirectional
Require parent-child relationship between communicating processes
Windows calls these anonymous pipes
Named Pipes
Named Pipes are more powerful than ordinary pipes

Communication is bidirectional
No parent-child relationship is necessary between the
communicating processes
Several processes can use the named pipe for communication
Provided on both UNIX and Windows systems
End of Chapter 3
Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018

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Chapter 3: Processes

An operating system executes a variety of programs that run as a

As a process executes, it changes state

Represented by the C structure task_struct

pid t_pid; /* process identifier */

Maximize CPU use, quickly switch processes onto CPU core

System must provide mechanisms for:

Process executes last statement and then asks the operating

Some operating systems do not allow child to exists if its parent

Many web browsers ran as single process (some still do)

Processes within a system may be independent or cooperating

An area of memory shared among the processes that wish

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

/* consume the item in next consumed */

Mechanism for processes to communicate and to synchronize

Message system – processes communicate with each other

IPC facility provides two operations:

The message size is either fixed or variable

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

Implementation of communication link

Messages are directed and received from mailboxes (also referred

/* consume the item in next_consumed */

Queue of messages attached to the link.

Ordinary Pipes allow communication in standard producer-consumer

Windows calls these anonymous pipes

Named Pipes are more powerful than ordinary pipes

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