Operating Systems: Concurrent and Distributed Software Design

4.10. Operating system structure and placement of processes

We can now put together the notions of static modules of code and their dynamic execution. We shall use an operating system as an example. We have seen how one operating system function is to support processes. We now consider how processes might be used in the implementation of an operating system. Figure 4.16 shows the major components of a traditional, closed operating system and gives a possible placement of processes to achieve dynamic execution of the system. Processes are allocated as follows:

• A single process is allocated to each user-level activity: a user program execution or a command execution. This assumes that each of these activities is a single sequential process. We ...