Scribd
Upload
18 views5 pages

Operating System Processes

A process is a program in execution, consisting of four sections: stack, heap, text, and data. The process life cycle includes five states: Start, Ready, Running, Waiting, and Terminated. The Process Control Block (PCB) is a data structure that contains essential information about a process, such as its state, ID, and scheduling information.

Uploaded by

Eddie Otieno
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
18 views5 pages

Operating System Processes

A process is a program in execution, consisting of four sections: stack, heap, text, and data. The process life cycle includes five states: Start, Ready, Running, Waiting, and Terminated. The Process Control Block (PCB) is a data structure that contains essential information about a process, such as its state, ID, and scheduling information.

Uploaded by

Eddie Otieno
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 5

Operating System – Processes

Process
A process is basically a program in execution. The execution of a process must progress in a
sequential fashion.
A process is defined as an entity which represents the basic unit of work to be implemented in the
system.
To put it in simple terms, we write our computer programs in a text file and when we execute this
program, it becomes a process which performs all the tasks mentioned in the program.
When a program is loaded into the memory and it becomes a process, it can be divided into four
sections ─ stack, heap, text and data. The following image shows a simplified layout of a process
inside main memory.

1 Sarah M. W. Maloba
S.N. Component & Description

1 Stack
The process Stack contains the temporary data such as method/function parameters, return address
and local variables.

2 Heap
This is dynamically allocated memory to a process during its run time.

3 Text
This includes the current activity represented by the value of Program Counter and the contents of the
processor's registers.

4 Data
This section contains the global and static variables.

Program
A program is a piece of code which may be a single line or millions of lines. A computer program
is usually written by a computer programmer in a programming language. For example, here is a
simple program written in C programming language −
#include <stdio.h>

int main() {
printf("Hello, World! \n");
return 0;
}
A computer program is a collection of instructions that performs a specific task when executed by
a computer. When we compare a program with a process, we can conclude that a process is a
dynamic instance of a computer program.
A part of a computer program that performs a well-defined task is known as an algorithm. A
collection of computer programs, libraries and related data are referred to as a software.

2 Sarah M. W. Maloba
Process Life Cycle
When a process executes, it passes through different states. These stages may differ in different
operating systems, and the names of these states are also not standardized.
In general, a process can have one of the following five states at a time.

S.N. State & Description

1 Start
This is the initial state when a process is first started/created.

2 Ready
The process is waiting to be assigned to a processor. Ready processes are waiting to have the processor
allocated to them by the operating system so that they can run. Process may come into this state
after Start state or while running it by but interrupted by the scheduler to assign CPU to some other
process.

3 Running
Once the process has been assigned to a processor by the OS scheduler, the process state is set to
running and the processor executes its instructions.

4 Waiting
Process moves into the waiting state if it needs to wait for a resource, such as waiting for user input,
or waiting for a file to become available.

5 Terminated or Exit
Once the process finishes its execution, or it is terminated by the operating system, it is moved to the
terminated state where it waits to be removed from main memory.

3 Sarah M. W. Maloba
Process Control Block (PCB)
A Process Control Block is a data structure maintained by the Operating System for every process.
The PCB is identified by an integer process ID (PID). A PCB keeps all the information needed to
keep track of a process as listed below in the table

S.N. Information & Description

1 Process State
The current state of the process i.e., whether it is ready, running, waiting, or whatever.

2 Process privileges
This is required to allow/disallow access to system resources.

3 Process ID
Unique identification for each of the process in the operating system.

4 Pointer
A pointer to parent process.

5 Program Counter
Program Counter is a pointer to the address of the next instruction to be executed for this process.

6 CPU registers
Various CPU registers where process need to be stored for execution for running state.

7 CPU Scheduling Information

4 Sarah M. W. Maloba
Process priority and other scheduling information which is required to schedule the process.

8 Memory management information


This includes the information of page table, memory limits, Segment table depending on memory used
by the operating system.

9 Accounting information
This includes the amount of CPU used for process execution, time limits, execution ID etc.

10 IO status information
This includes a list of I/O devices allocated to the process.

The architecture of a PCB is completely dependent on Operating System and may contain different
information in different operating systems. Here is a simplified diagram of a PCB:

The PCB is maintained for a process throughout its lifetime, and is deleted once the process
terminates.

5 Sarah M. W. Maloba

You might also like

pFad - Phonifier reborn

Pfad - The Proxy pFad of © 2024 Garber Painting. All rights reserved.

Note: This service is not intended for secure transactions such as banking, social media, email, or purchasing. Use at your own risk. We assume no liability whatsoever for broken pages.


Alternative Proxies:

Alternative Proxy

pFad Proxy

pFad v3 Proxy

pFad v4 Proxy