Discuss how operating systems enable processes to share and exchange information.

 

The operating systems enable processes to share and exchange information by first: Processor executes an instruction from the memory containing the monitor then it executes the instructions in the user program until it encounters an ending or error condition “control is passed to a job” means the processor is fetching and executing instructions in a user program “control” is returned to the monitor” means that the processor is fetching and executing instructions from the monitor program.

The operating systems enable processes to share and exchange information by first: Processor executes an instruction from the memory containing the monitor then it executes the instructions in the user program until it encounters an ending or error condition “control is passed to a job” means the processor is fetching and executing instructions in a user program “control” is returned to the monitor” means that the processor is fetching and executing instructions from the monitor program

For each process there is a Process Control Block, PCB, which stores the following types of process-specific information. You have the following Processes:

 

·         Process State - Running, waiting, etc., as discussed above.

·         Process ID, and parent process ID.

·         CPU registers and Program Counter - These need to be saved and restored when swapping processes in and out of the CPU.

·         CPU-Scheduling information - Such as priority information and pointers to scheduling queues.

·         Memory-Management information - E.g. page tables or segment tables.

·         Accounting information - user and kernel CPU time consumed, account numbers, limits, etc.

·         I/O Status information - Devices allocated, open file tables, etc.

Reference:

  Abraham Silberschatz, Greg Gagne, and Peter Baer Galvin, "Operating System Concepts, Ninth Edition "