A Solution: Asynchronous I/O
Explore how asynchronous I/O enables non-blocking input/output operations by immediately returning control to applications while I/O completes in the background. Understand the use of control structures like aiocb, polling with aio_error, and interrupt-driven notifications. This lesson helps you grasp event-based concurrency techniques critical for efficient I/O management without blocking processes.
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To overcome the issue of blocking calls discussed in the last lesson, many modern operating systems have introduced new ways to issue I/O requests to the disk system, referred to generically as asynchronous I/O. These interfaces enable an application to issue an I/O request and return control immediately to the caller before the I/O has completed; additional interfaces enable an application to determine whether various I/Os have completed.
An example: Mac’s API
For example, let us examine the interface provided on a Mac (other systems have similar APIs). The APIs revolve around a basic structure, the struct aiocb, or AIO control block in common terminology. A simplified version of the ...