7.2 Operating System

The operating system manages resources – CPU time and Memory – and allocates them to requesting programs. Very roughly, a running program is represented by a Process within the O/S. We shall have a brief review of how an O/S manages the processes.

All the system services are accessed via System Call Interface. We shall see some examples of assembly language programs using a few common system calls.

7.2.1 A Running Program – A Process

On a Unix-like system, including Linux, many user and system processes run concurrently (are active simultaneously). The one the user has invoked usually runs in the foreground, the other processes run in the background. The command ps will show you which processes are active and what PID numbers ...

Get Compilers: Principles and Practice now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.