Operating System-II

1. What is DRAM? In which form does it store data? - DRAM is not the best, but it’s cheap, does the job, and is available almost everywhere you look. DRAM data resides in a cell made of a capacitor and a transistor. The capacitor tends to lose data unless it’s recharged every couple of milliseconds, and this recharging tends to slow down the performance of DRAM compared to speedier RAM types.
2. What is Dispatcher? - Dispatcher module gives control of the CPU to the process selected by the short-term scheduler; this involves: Switching context, Switching to user mode, Jumping to the proper location in the user program to restart that program, dispatch latency – time it takes for the dispatcher to stop one process and start another running.
3. What is CPU Scheduler? - Selects from among the processes in memory that are ready to execute, and allocates the CPU to one of them. CPU scheduling decisions may take place when a process:
1.Switches from running to waiting state.
2.Switches from running to ready state.
3.Switches from waiting to ready.
4.Terminates. Scheduling under 1 and 4 is non-preemptive.
All other scheduling is preemptive.
4. What is Context Switch? - Switching the CPU to another process requires saving the state of the old process and loading the saved state for the new process. This task is known as a context switch. Context-switch time is pure overhead, because the system does no useful work while switching. Its speed varies from machine to machine, depending on the memory speed, the number of registers which must be copied, the existed of special instructions(such as a single instruction to load or store all registers).
5. What is cache memory? - Cache memory is random access memory (RAM) that a computer microprocessor can access more quickly than it can access regular RAM. As the microprocessor processes data, it looks first in the cache memory and if it finds the data there (from a previous reading of data), it does not have to do the more time-consuming reading of data from larger memory.
6. What is a Safe State and what is its use in deadlock avoidance? - When a process requests an available resource, system must decide if immediate allocation leaves the system in a safe state. System is in safe state if there exists a safe sequence of all processes. Deadlock Avoidance: ensure that a system will never enter an unsafe state.
7. What is a Real-Time System? - A real time process is a process that must respond to the events within a certain time period. A real time operating system is an operating system that can run real time processes successfully.
8. What is semaphore? - In simple terms a Semaphore is a unit or resource which is used for synchronization between two processes , it is kind of flag (in abstract terms) which every process will check before processing ahead to avoid the deadlock situation.
9. What is spin lock? - A spin lock is a lock where the thread simply waits in a loop (”spins”) repeatedly checking until the lock becomes available. As the thread remains active but isn’t performing a useful task, the use of such a lock is a kind of busy waiting. Once acquired, spin locks will usually be held until they are explicitly released, although in some implementations they may be automatically released if the thread blocks, or “goes to sleep”.
10. What is difference between binary semaphore and mutex? - The differences are:
1) Mutex can be used only for mutual exclusion, while binary can be used of mutual exclusion as well as synchronisation.
2) Mutex can be given only by the task that took it.
3) Mutex cannot be given from an ISR.
4) Mutual-exclusion semaphores can be taken recursively. This means that the semaphore can be taken more than once by the task that holds it before finally being released.
5) Mutex provides a options for making the task that took it as DELETE_SAFE. This means, that the task cannot be deleted when it holds mutex.
11. What is virtual memory? - Virtual memory is a common part of most operating systems on desktop computers. It has become so common because it provides a big benefit for users at a very low cost.
Most computers today have something like 64 or 128 megabytes of RAM (random-access memory) available for use by the CPU (central processing unit). Often, that amount of RAM is not enough to run all of the programs that most users expect to run at once. For example, if you load the Windows operating system, an e-mail program, a Web browser and word processor into RAM simultaneously, 64 megabytes is not enough to hold it all. If there were no such thing as virtual memory, your computer would have to say, “Sorry, you cannot load any more applications. Please close an application to load a new one.” With virtual memory, the computer can look for areas of RAM that have not been used recently and copy them onto the hard disk. This frees up space in RAM to load the new application. Because it does this automatically, you don’t even know it is happening, and it makes your computer feel like is has unlimited RAM space even though it has only 32 megabytes installed. Because hard-disk space is so much cheaper than RAM chips, virtual memory also provides a nice economic benefit.
Of course, the read/write speed of a hard drive is much slower than RAM, and the technology of a hard drive is not geared toward accessing small pieces of data at a time. If your system has to rely too heavily on virtual memory, you will notice a significant performance drop. The key is to have enough RAM to handle everything you tend to work on simultaneously. Then, the only time you “feel” the slowness of virtual memory is in the slight pause that occurs when you change tasks. When you have enough RAM for your needs, virtual memory works beautifully. When you don’t, the operating system has to constantly swap information back and forth between RAM and the hard disk. This is called thrashing, and it can make your computer feel incredibly slow.
12. Explain the concept of Reentrancy. - It is a useful, memory-saving technique for multiprogrammed timesharing systems. A Reentrant Procedure is one in which multiple users can share a single copy of a program during the same period. Reentrancy has 2 key aspects: The program code cannot modify itself, and the local data for each user process must be stored separately. Thus, the permanent part is the code, and the temporary part is the pointer back to the calling program and local variables used by that program. Each execution instance is called activation. It executes the code in the permanent part, but has its own copy of local variables/parameters. The temporary part associated with each activation is the activation record. Generally, the activation record is kept on the stack.
Note: A reentrant procedure can be interrupted and called by an interrupting program, and still execute correctly on returning to the procedure.
13. Difference between multi threading and multi tasking? - muti threading is a state where more than 1 thread will be executing concurrently.
(Not simultaneously). when the system has more than 1 processor then it may support execution of threads simultaneously.
Multi tasking: you are able to listen music, play games and print a document. able to do these things at a time is called as multi tasking.
They r very similar to each other. When u r doing multi threading sometimes u r doing multi tasking.
14. What is page faults ? - An interrupt that occurs when a program requests data that is not currently in real memory. The interrupt triggers the operating system to fetch the data from a virtual memory and load it into RAM. An invalid page fault or page fault error occurs when the operating system cannot find the data in virtual memory. This usually happens when the virtual memory area, or the table that maps virtual addresses to real addresses, becomes corrupt.
15. What is thrashing? - It is a phenomenon in virtual memory schemes when the processor spends most of its time swapping pages, rather than executing instructions. This is due to an inordinate number of page faults.
What are turnaround time and response time? - Turnaround time is the interval between the submission of a job and its completion. Response time is the interval between submission of a request, and the first response to that request.
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