Operating Systems Review

Flashcards covering key concepts and terminology related to Operating Systems.

Operating System (OS)

A program that acts as an intermediary between the user and the computer hardware.

Kernel

The core component of the OS that manages operations at the most fundamental level.

Trap (Exception)

A software-generated interrupt that can occur due to an error or a user request for an OS service.

Multithreading

A process that allows multiple threads to exist within a single process, enabling better resource sharing and responsiveness.

User Threads

Threads that are managed by a user-level thread library, not visible to the OS.

Kernel Threads

Threads that are managed by the OS kernel and are visible to it.

First-Come, First-Served (FCFS)

A non-preemptive scheduling algorithm that processes that arrive first get CPU first.

Shortest Job First (SJF)

A scheduling algorithm that selects the process with the shortest predicted CPU burst time.

Round Robin Scheduling

A CPU scheduling algorithm where each process is given a fixed time quantum in a cyclic order.

Priority Scheduling

A scheduling algorithm where CPU is allocated to processes based on their priority.

Starvation

A condition where lower-priority processes may never get executed.

Aging

A technique used in priority scheduling to gradually increase the priority of waiting processes to prevent starvation.

Mutual Exclusion

A condition ensuring that only one process can execute in its critical section at a time.

Critical Section Problem

The issue of ensuring that multiple processes can access shared resources without causing inconsistency.

Semaphore

A synchronization tool that uses wait() and signal() operations to manage resource access.

Mutex Lock

A locking mechanism that allows only one thread to enter the critical section at a time.

Busy Waiting

A situation where a process continuously checks for a condition, wasting CPU cycles.