Final Exam Multiple-Choice Topics (Part 1)

What are the stages in the lifecycle of a process?

New, ready, running, waiting, terminated.

What is context switching?

The process of storing the state of a process or thread so that it can be resumed later.

What are the benefits of multithreading?

Increased responsiveness, better resource utilization, and improved performance.

Describe the One-to-One model in thread management.

Each user-level thread is mapped to a kernel thread.

What is the difference between user threads and kernel threads?

User threads are managed at the user level, while kernel threads are managed by the operating system.

What are the types of schedulers in CPU scheduling?

Short-term, long-term, and medium-term schedulers.

What does FCFS stand for in CPU scheduling?

First Come First Serve.

What is the Shortest Job First (SJF) algorithm?

A scheduling algorithm that selects the process with the shortest execution time.

What is Round Robin scheduling?

A scheduling algorithm that assigns a fixed time slice to each process in a cyclic order.

Define Turnaround Time in CPU scheduling.

The total time taken from submission to completion of a process.

What are the requirements for the Critical Section Problem?

Mutual Exclusion, Progress, Bounded Waiting.

A solution(s) to the critical section problem?

Peterson’s algorithm, semaphores, and mutexes.

Race conditions and their impact on concurrent systems?

Situations where the outcome depends on the sequence or timing of uncontrollable events.

What are the necessary conditions for deadlocks?

Mutual Exclusion, Hold & Wait, No Preemption, Circular Wait.

What is the Banker’s Algorithm used for?

To avoid deadlocks by making resource allocation decisions.

What is a Resource Allocation Graph?

A directed graph that represents the relationship between processes and resources.

What is the difference between logical and physical addresses?

Logical addresses are generated by the CPU, while physical addresses refer to actual memory locations.

What is the role of the Memory Management Unit (MMU)?

To handle the translation of logical addresses to physical addresses.

What is Swapping in memory management?

Transferring processes between main memory and disk.

Explain Paging in memory management.

Dividing memory into fixed-size units called pages.

What are hierarchical page tables?

A multi-level structure for organizing page tables to save memory.

What are system calls?

Functions that provide the interface between a running program and the operating system.

What are some types of system calls?

Process control, file management, device management, inter-process communication.

What is the role of bootstrapping in operating systems?

The process of starting a computer and loading the operating system.

What services do operating systems provide?

Resource Management, Error Handling, Protection/Security.