HP-UX 11i Tuning and Performance

7.1. Processes and Threads

Process is the name given to a particular instance or context of an executable in the operating system. The processors of a system execute the instructions contained within a process context. There can be multiple processes in varying states of completion running on the processors of a system. Processes have been the basic executable unit of work since the beginning of Unix in the 1970s. Each process under HP-UX uses various types of memory regions, such as:

• text (executable code)

• data (private global data such as globals and BSS area, stack, heap, etc.)

• shared libraries (code)

• shared memory (data)

• memory-mapped files

See Chapter 8, “Memory Bottlenecks” on page 203 for additional information about how a process uses memory. ...