Kernel Internals in Operating Systems

This chapter is from the book

Systems Performance, 2nd Edition

Learn More Buy

This chapter is from the book

This chapter is from the book 

Systems Performance, 2nd Edition

Learn More Buy

3.7 Exercises

1. Answer the following questions about OS terminology:

   • What is the difference between a process, a thread, and a task?

   • What is a mode switch and a context switch?

   • What is the difference between paging and process swapping?

   • What is the difference between I/O-bound and CPU-bound workloads?

2. Answer the following conceptual questions:

   • Describe the role of the kernel.

   • Describe the role of system calls.

   • Describe the role of VFS and its location in the I/O stack.

3. Answer the following deeper questions:

   • List the reasons why a thread would leave the current CPU.

   • Describe the advantages of virtual memory and demand paging.