Computer Architecture and Operating Systems

Lecture 6: Processes and Threads

Andrei Tatarnikov
[email protected]
@andrewt0301
Process Concept
 An operating system executes a variety of programs:
 Batch system – jobs
 Time-shared systems – user programs or tasks
 Textbook uses the terms job and process almost
interchangeably
 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 2
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

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Process in Memory

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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

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Diagram of Process State

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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 7
CPU Switch From Process to Process

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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
See next chapter

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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 */

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Process Scheduling
Maximize CPU use, quickly switch processes onto CPU
for time sharing
Process scheduler selects among available processes
for next execution on CPU
Maintains scheduling queues of processes
 Job queue – set of all processes in the system
 Ready queue – set of all processes residing in main
memory, ready and waiting to execute
 Device queues – set of processes waiting for an I/O device
 Processes migrate among the various queues
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Ready Queue And Various I/O Device Queues

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Representation of Process Scheduling
Queueing diagram represents queues, resources,
flows

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Schedulers
 Short-term scheduler (or CPU scheduler) – selects which process should
be executed next and allocates CPU
 Sometimes the only scheduler in a system
 Short-term scheduler is invoked frequently (milliseconds)  (must be
fast)
 Long-term scheduler (or job scheduler) – selects which processes
should be brought into the ready queue
 Long-term scheduler is invoked infrequently (seconds, minutes) 
(may be slow)
 The long-term scheduler controls the degree of multiprogramming
 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 14
Addition of Medium Term Scheduling
 Medium-term scheduler can be added if degree of
multiple programming needs to decrease
 Remove process from memory, store on disk, bring
back in from disk to continue execution: swapping

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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
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Operations on Processes
System must provide mechanisms for:
 process creation,
 process termination,
 and so on as detailed next

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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
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A Tree of Processes in Linux
i ni t
pi d = 1

l ogi n kt hr e add s s hd
pi d = 8415 pi d = 2 pi d = 3028

bas h khe l pe r pdf l us h s s hd

pi d = 8416 pi d = 6 pi d = 200 pi d = 3610

e mac s t cs ch
ps
pi d = 9204 pi d = 4005
pi d = 9298

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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

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C Program Forking Separate Process

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Creating a Separate Process via Windows API

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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
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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 24
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 25
Communications Models
 (a)Message passing.
(b) Shared memory.

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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

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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

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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.

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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
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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
 Solaris
 Linux
 Tru64 UNIX
 Mac OS X
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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 (Solaris, Linux,
Mac OS X)

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Pthreads Example

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Pthreads Example (Cont.)
P t h r e a d s E x a m p le ( C o n t . )

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Pthreads Code for Joining 10 Threads

O p e r a t in g S y s t e m C o n c e p t s – 9 t h E d it io n 4 .2 1 S ilb e r s c h a t z , G a lv in a n d G a g n e © 2 0 1 3

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Windows Multithreaded C Program

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Windows Multithreaded C Program (Cont.)

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Any Questions?

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