Search⌘ K
Home
Courses
Operating Systems: Virtualization, Concurrency & Persistence

The fork() System Call

Explore how the fork system call creates new processes by duplicating the calling process in UNIX. Understand the behavior of parent and child processes, their process identifiers, and how CPU scheduling causes nondeterministic execution order.

We'll cover the following...

Running p1.c

The fork() system call is used to create a new process“A Multiprocessor System Design” by Melvin E. Conway. AFIPS ’63 Fall Joint Computer Conference, New York, USA 1963. An early paper on how to design multiprocessing systems; maybe​ the first place the term fork() was used in the discussion of spawning new processes.. However, be forewarned: it is certainly the strangest routine you will ever callWell, OK, we admit that we don’t know that for sure; who knows what routines you call when no one is looking? But fork() is pretty odd, no matter how unusual your routine-calling patterns are.. More specifically, you have a ...