The document discusses process operations in operating systems, focusing on process creation and termination. Process creation involves generating new processes through system calls or user requests, while process termination occurs when a process finishes execution or encounters an error. Additionally, it highlights the concept of cooperating processes, which can share data and communicate to enhance efficiency and speed in task execution.
The document discusses process operations in operating systems, focusing on process creation and termination. Process creation involves generating new processes through system calls or user requests, while process termination occurs when a process finishes execution or encounters an error. Additionally, it highlights the concept of cooperating processes, which can share data and communicate to enhance efficiency and speed in task execution.
The document discusses process operations in operating systems, focusing on process creation and termination. Process creation involves generating new processes through system calls or user requests, while process termination occurs when a process finishes execution or encounters an error. Additionally, it highlights the concept of cooperating processes, which can share data and communicate to enhance efficiency and speed in task execution.
The document discusses process operations in operating systems, focusing on process creation and termination. Process creation involves generating new processes through system calls or user requests, while process termination occurs when a process finishes execution or encounters an error. Additionally, it highlights the concept of cooperating processes, which can share data and communicate to enhance efficiency and speed in task execution.
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Process Operations in operating system
The operations of process carried out by an operating system are primarily of two types:
1. Process creation 2. Process termination
1) Process Creation Process creation is a task of creating new processes. There are different situations in which a new process is created. There are different ways to create new process. A new process can be created at the time of initialization of operating system or when system calls such as fork () are initiated by other processes. The process, which creates a new process using system calls, is called parent process while the new process that is created is called child process. The child processes can create new processes using system calls. A new process can also create by an operating system based on the request received from the user.
The process creation is very common in running computer system because
corresponding to every task that is performed there is a process associated with it. For instance, a new process is created every time a user logs on to a computer system, an application program such a MS Word is initiated, or when a document printed.
2) Process termination Process termination is an operation in which a process is terminated after the execution of its last instruction. This operation is used to terminate or end any process. When a process is terminated, the resources that were being utilized by the process are released by the operating system. When a child process terminates, it sends the status information back to the parent process before terminating. The child process can also be terminated by the parent process if the task performed by the child process is no longer needed. In addition, when a parent process terminates, it has to terminate the child process as well became a child process cannot run when its parent process has been terminated. The above figure shows the hierarchical structure of processes.
The termination of a process when all its instruction has been executed successfully is called normal termination. However, there are instances when a process terminates due to some error. This termination is called as abnormal termination of a process.
Cooperating Process Cooperating processes are those that can affect or are affected by other processes running on the system. Cooperating processes may share data with each other.
Reasons for needing cooperating processes
There may be many reasons for the requirement of cooperating processes. Some of these are given as follows −
Modularity Modularity involves dividing complicated tasks into smaller subtasks. These subtasks can completed by different cooperating processes. This leads to faster and more efficient completion of the required tasks.
Information Sharing Sharing of information between multiple processes can be accomplished using cooperating processes. This may include access to the same files. A mechanism is required so that the processes can access the files in parallel to each other.
Convenience There are many tasks that a user needs to do such as compiling, printing, editing etc. It is convenient if these tasks can be managed by cooperating processes.
Computation Speedup Subtasks of a single task can be performed parallely using cooperating processes. This increases the computation speedup as the task can be executed faster. However, this is only possible if the system has multiple processing elements.
Methods of Cooperation Cooperating processes can coordinate with each other using shared data or messages. Details about these are given as follows −
Cooperation by Sharing The cooperating processes can cooperate with each other using shared data such as memory, variables, files, databases etc. Critical section is used to provide data integrity and writing is mutually exclusive to prevent inconsistent data. A diagram that demonstrates cooperation by sharing is given as follows −
In the above diagram, Process P1 and P2 can cooperate with each other using shared data such as memory, variables, files, databases etc.
Cooperation by Communication The cooperating processes can cooperate with each other using messages. This may lead to deadlock if each process is waiting for a message from the other to perform a operation. Starvation is also possible if a process never receives a message. A diagram that demonstrates cooperation by communication is given as follows − In the above diagram, Process P1 and P2 can cooperate with each other using messages to communicate.
