Solaris™ Internals: Core Kernel Components

8.3. The Kernel Process Table

Every process occupies a slot in the kernel process table, which maintains a process structure (commonly abbreviated as proc structure ) for the process. The process structure is relatively large, about 900 bytes in size, and contains all the information the kernel needs to manage the process and schedule the LWPs and kthreads for execution. As processes are created, kernel memory space for the process table is allocated dynamically by the kmem cache allocation and management routines.

8.3.1. Process Limits

At system boot time, the kernel initializes a process_cache, which begins the allocation of kernel memory for storing the process table. Initially, space is allocated for one proc structure. The table itself is ...