Untitled Flashcards Set

Atomicity

A property of an operation that guarantees it is executed as a single, indivisible unit.

Barrier

A synchronization mechanism that forces threads to wait until all reach a specific point.

Blocked Process

A process that is waiting for an event, such as I/O completion.

Context Switching

The process of saving the state of a running process and loading another process.

Critical Section

A section of code that accesses shared resources and must be executed atomically.

Deadlock

A situation in which two or more threads are blocked indefinitely, waiting for each other.

External Fragmentation

Unused memory space outside allocated regions, complicating large memory allocation.

fork()

A system call that creates a duplicate (child) of the calling process.

Internal Fragmentation

Unused memory space within an allocated region, leading to inefficient memory utilization.

Kernel

The core of an operating system that manages system resources.

Lock

A synchronization mechanism that protects a critical section by ensuring only one thread can acquire it.

Multiprogramming

A technique allowing multiple programs to share CPU time, improving CPU utilization.

Mutual Exclusion

The requirement that only one thread can access a critical section at a time.

Page Fault

An interrupt that occurs when a process tries to access a page not in physical memory.

Page Table

A data structure that maps virtual addresses to physical addresses.

Paging

A memory management technique that divides memory into fixed-size blocks

Process

A dynamic instance of a program in execution, with its own state and resources.

Process Control Block (PCB)

A data structure used by the OS to store information about a process.

Program

A static set of instructions written in a programming language.

Race Condition

A situation when the behavior of a program depends on the unpredictable timing of threads.

Ready Process

A process that is loaded into memory and ready to run, waiting for CPU access.

Running Process

A process that is currently executing on the CPU.

Semaphore

A synchronization variable that controls access to shared resources.

System Call

A request made by a program to the OS kernel for a specific service.

Thread

A lightweight unit of execution that shares the address space of a process.

Timesharing

A technique that allows multiple users or processes to share a computer system.

Translation Lookaside Buffer (TLB)

A cache that stores recent virtual-to-physical address translations.

Virtual Address Space (VAS)

The set of memory addresses that a process can use.

Virtual Memory

A technique allowing a process to use more memory than is physically available.

Virtualization

The process of creating a virtual representation of a physical resource.

wait()

A system call used by a parent process to wait for the termination of a child process.