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A process control block (PCB), also sometimes called a process descriptor, is a data structure used by a computer operating system to store all the information about a process. When a process is created (initialized or installed), the operating system creates a corresponding process control block, which specifies and tracks the process state (i ...
A "ready" or "waiting" process has been loaded into main memory and is awaiting execution on a CPU (to be context switched onto the CPU by the dispatcher, or short-term scheduler). There may be many "ready" processes at any one point of the system's execution—for example, in a one-processor system, only one process can be executing at any one ...
Ready (ready to be executed); Blocked (waiting for an event, I/O for example). Most tasks are blocked or ready most of the time because generally only one task can run at a time per CPU core. The number of items in the ready queue can vary greatly, depending on the number of tasks the system needs to perform and the type of scheduler that the ...
There can be many processes in the READY and BLOCKED states, and each of these states will have an associated queue for processes. Processes entering the system must go initially into the READY state, and processes can only enter the RUNNING state via the READY state. Processes normally leave the system from the RUNNING state. For each of the ...
Modern operating systems also provide system calls that allow a process's thread to create other threads and wait for them to terminate ("join" them) in a similar fashion. An operating system may provide variations of the wait call that allow a process to wait for any of its child processes to exit , or to wait for a single specific child ...
The waiting primitive can be a busy-wait loop or an OS-provided primitive that prevents the thread from being scheduled until it is ready to proceed. Here is an example pseudocode implementation of parts of a threading system and mutexes and Mesa-style condition variables, using test-and-set and a first-come, first-served policy:
In multiprogramming systems, a task runs until it must wait for an external event or until the operating system's scheduler forcibly swaps the running task out of the CPU. Real-time systems such as those designed to control industrial robots, require timely processing; a single processor might be shared between calculations of machine movement ...
Once the event occurs for which the process is waiting ("is blocked on"), the process is advanced from blocked state to an imminent one, such as runnable. In a multitasking computer system, individual tasks, or threads of execution, must share the resources of the system. Shared resources include: the CPU, network and network interfaces, memory ...