Module 2 Introduction

Modern operating systems perform tasks to manage processes which allow applications, utilities and user requests to be serviced. Tasks include allocation of resources to processes and allow processes to perform in a multi-programming fashion. The operating system must maintain information regarding each process, including resources allocated and process current state. This is stored in the Process Control Block which is created by the operating system for each process.  Multi-programming systems require additional tasks to allow both interleaving and simultaneous execution of processes.  Processes may be broken into smaller components called threads that assist performance of these tasks.  Threads share the resources allocated to it's process.  

 

In this module, we'll examine processes and threads.

It is important to understand how processes and threads are implemented to be able to effectively select and administer Operating System solutions.