A Detailed Look at Operating System Processes
B. H. Venter
Department of Computer Science, University of Port Elizabeth
P.O. Box 1600, Port Elizabeth, 6000 South Africa,
e-mail: csabhv@upe.ac.za (now hermanv@microsoft.com)
Abstract
An operating system provides, among other things, an operational
definition of a process. The concept of a process is one of the
fundamental concepts of Computer Science, and the designer of an
operating system must strive to provide a definition that is
simple to understand, does not violate the intuitive notions one
has about processes, and is simple to implement efficiently on a
wide range of computer systems. On the other hand, the definition
should not fail to provide the functionality that existing
operating systems have, by user demand, gradually evolved into
providing. This paper presents a framework for discussing the
operational definition of a process, and uses this framework to
discuss systematically some of the more important decisions and
trade-offs regarding processes, that the designer of a new
operating system must make.
Keywords:
operating systems, process, light-weight process, memory-sharing,
interrupts, exceptions, real-time
Computing Review Category:
D.4.1 OPERATING SYSTEMS, Process Management
Received June 1987, Accepted July 1987 ]
