Multiprogramming
Explore the concept of multiprogramming and its role in operating systems to optimize CPU usage by loading multiple programs simultaneously. Understand its limitations for interactive systems and how multitasking and task scheduling enable responsive user experiences through pseudo-parallel processing.
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Multiprogramming
Slow peripheral devices cause the CPU to idle. This problem led OS developers to the concept of multiprogramming. This concept implies that the OS loads several programs into the computer memory at the same time. The first program works as long as all resources it needs are available. It stops execution once a required resource is busy. Then, the OS switches to another program.
We’ll go over an example. Let’s suppose that our application wants to read data from our hard disk. While the disk controller reads the data, it’s busy. It cannot process the following requests from the program. So, the application waits for the controller. In this case, the OS stops executing it and switches to the second ...