Operating Systems

Review (Unit 2: Process and Threads)

Points to Remember:
1. Process : It is a program in execution
2. Components of the process are:
 Object program
 The input data
 Resources (E.g., files, etc.)
 PCB – Process Control Block, containing the state of the process in execution.
3. Difference between program and process:
Program Process
 Static entity made up of source Dynamic entity that contains Object
program language statements program, the input data, Resources and
PCB.

4. PCB: OS creates a PCB (process control block table) for each process to manage that
process.

5. Process States and valid transitions between them

o New State ( means a process that just been created)

o Ready State (means a process that is prepared to execute)
 Running State (means a process is currently being executed)
  Waiting state ( means a process is waiting for some event to occur)
 Terminated (means a process is just been terminated)
6. Cooperating Processes:
 A process is said to be a cooperating process if it can affect or be affected by
other processes in the system.
 Advantages:
o Information Sharing.
o Computation Speedup
7. Types of inter process communication:
 Shared Memory: Processes can exchange information by reading and writing data
to the shared region.
 Message passing: Processes communicate by passing messages. SEND and
RECEIVE primitives are used.
8. Message passing Types:
 Blocking Send, Blocking Receive: Both receiver and sender are blocked until the
message is delivered.
 Non-Blocking Send, Blocking Receive: Sender can continue the execution after
sending a message; the receiver is blocked until message arrives.
 Non-Blocking Send, Non-Blocking Receive: Neither party waits.
9. Remote Procedure Call: To execute a procedure at a remote site and ship the results
back.
10. Thread:
 Thread is a light weighted process.
 A thread is a basic unit of CPU utilization.
 Example 1: A Web browser might have one thread display images or text while
another thread retrieves data from the network.
 Example 2 : A word processor may have a thread for displaying graphics, another
thread for responding to keystrokes from the user, and a third thread for
performing spelling and grammar checking in the background.
 Advantages: Responsiveness, Resource sharing, Economy, Scalability.

11. Difference between Threads and processes:

Processes
 Heavy weighted
 Processes don’t share an address space
 When a process is created memory is
allocated to store instructions and data.
Threads
 Light Weighted
 Threads share an address space
 When a thread is created only
registers and stack are allocated.
12. Multi-threading Models:
• Many to One Model:
- Many user-level threads mapped to single kernel thread.
- Examples: Solaris Green Threads
- Advantages: Easy to implement.
- Disadvantages: Parallelism is not possible
• One-to-One Model:
- Each user-level thread maps to kernel thread.
- Examples: Windows 95/98/NT/2000, Linux
- Advantages: Parallelism is achieved.
- Disadvantages: Costly
• Many-To-Many Model
- It multiplexes any number of user threads onto an equal or smaller number
of kernel threads.
- Example: HP-UX
13. Difference between user level and Kernel level Threads:
Kernel Level Threads User Level Threads
 Threads implemented inside the OS  It is implemented in user-level libraries
 Thread operations are system calls  All operations are normal procedure
calls
 Advantage: It is good for those  Advantage: Simple, Fast and Efficient
applications that are frequently block than kernel threads
 Disadvantage: They are slow and  Disadvantages: Lack of coordination
inefficient. between threads

14. Schedulers:
 Long-term scheduler (or job scheduler) : It selects which processes should be brought
into the ready queue.
 Short-term scheduler (or CPU scheduler) : It selects which process should be executed
next and allocates to CPU .

15. Scheduling Criteria

a. Processor Utilization
b. Throughput
c. Turnaround Time (tat)
d. Waiting Time (wt)
e. Response Time (rt)
16. Scheduling Algorithms
 FIFO (or FCFS)
 Shortest-Job-First (SJF)
 Priority-based
 Round-robin
 Multilevel Queue
 Multilevel feedback queue
 Refer Class notes for Scheduling problems

17. Preemptive and non-preemptive scheduling:

 Preemptive – if a new process with CPU burst less than remaining time of
current process, preempt the current process.
 Non-preemptive scheduling: Once CPU assigned, process not preempted until
its CPU burst completes.