Chapter 2

Processes

OPERATING SYSTEMS
Design and Implementation

Instructor:
Hadi Salimi
Computer Engineering Department
IRAN University of Science and Technology
hsalimi@iust.ac.ir

IPC

Processes frequently need to
communicate with other processes

For example, in a shell pipeline, the output
of the first process must be passed to the
second process.

This is called Inter-Process
Communication or IPC.

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Race Conditions

Two processes want to access shared memory at same time. What

happens if they try to access it simultaneously?

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Race Conditions

Situations like this are called race
conditions.

What will happen if two processes execute
the following code?
X=0;
…
Read(x);
X++;
Write(x);

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Critical Sections

We should prohibit more than one process
from reading and writing the shared data
at the same time.

In other words, what we need is mutual
exclusion.

The part of the program where the shared
memory is accessed is called the critical
section or critical region.

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Solution Criteria

Conditions to hold to have a good solution:
 No two processes may be simultaneously
inside their critical regions.
 No assumptions may be made about speeds
or the number of CPUs.
 No process running outside its critical section
may block other processes.
 No process should have to wait forever to
enter its critical region.

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Mutual Exclusion

Busy Waiting
 Disabling interrupts
 Strict alternation
 Peterson’s solution
 TSL instruction

Sleep and Wakeup
 Semaphores
 Monitors
 Message passing

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Disabling Interrupts

Let each process to disable all interrupts
just after entering its critical section and
re-enable them just before leaving.
 Isit wise to let the processes do such a job?
 What will happen if one process never turn
the interrupts on?
 What if the program is running on a
multiprocessor?

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Lock Variables

Does the following code solve the
problem?

If (lock ==0) then

lock = 1;
Begin Critical Section
…
lock = 0;
End Critical Section

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Strict Alternation

Which condition is violated?

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Peterson’s Algorithm

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TSL Instruction

It is another proposal that requires a little
help from hardware.

Many computers have a TEST AND LOCK
instruction that works as follows:
 Reads the memory into a register and stores
a non-zero value into it.

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TSL (cont.)

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Sleep and Wakeup

The described solutions requiring busy
waiting.

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Sleep and Wakeup

Semaphores

Monitors

Message Passing

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Sleep and Wakeup

Despite busy waiting methods which
waste CPU cycles, in this method
processes may sleep or wakeup using
system calls.

Let’s clarify this approach using an
example, namely, producers and
consumers.

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Sleep and Wakeup

Consider two
processes Consumer
Process
Producer
Process
which produce
and consume
items from/to
a buffer with
size N.

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Producer/Consumer

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Problems

This solution is also wrong.

Consider the situations in which both the
producer and the consumer access the
shared variable count simultaneously.

This may cause both of the processes go
sleep.

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Semaphores

In many problems there is a need to count
an event, like producing an item or
consuming it.

Accessing to this counter should be
protected against concurrent processes.

Such a protected counter is called a
semaphore which has more features.

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Semaphores (cont.)

Two operators are defined on a
semaphore: Down and Up (generalizations
of sleep and wakeup)
Down(int& x) { Up(int& x) {
If (x > 0) If (there is any waiting process)
Pick a process from queue and make it
x--; ready;
else else
Sleep() }; x++ };
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Semaphores (cont.)

How to protect a critical section using
semaphores?
int s = 1;
Down(s);
…
Critical Section
…
Up(s);

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Semaphores (cont.)

Consider a resource which can be shared by 3
processes. How accessing this device can be
protected using semaphores?
int x = 3;
Down(x);
…
Accessing the shared resource.
…
Up(x);

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Producer/Consumer

What happens if the

down operator first
applied on mutex?

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Monitors

The unfortunate situation which causes no
process to proceed is called deadlock.

We study it in detail in the next chapter.

The problem was pointed out to show how
careful one must be when using
semaphores.

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Monitors (cont.)

To make it easier to write correct
programs, a higher level primitive called
monitor is introduced.

It is a collection of procedures, variables
and data structures that are all grouped in
a package.

An important property:
 Only one process can be active in a monitor
at any time.
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Monitors (cont.)
monitor example
int x;
procedure producer(x)
…
end;
procedure consumer(x)
…
end;
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Monitors (cont.)

Monitors are a programming language
construct, so the compiler should handle
calls to procedures.

When a process calls a monitor
procedure, the first few instructions of the
procedure will check to see if any other
process is currently active or not.

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