What are different components of operating system? – Part 1

All the components of an OS must exist in order so as to make the different parts of a system work together in cooperation. All the hardware needs of a software application are satisfied only through the operating system, be it as simple as mouse movement or as complex at Ethernet.

1. Kernel: 

- This component of the OS is the medium through which application software can connect to the computer’s hardware system. 

- This component is aided by many device drivers and firmware. 

- With the help of these, it provides a very basic control level for all the hardware devices of a system.

- For programs, the memory access in RAM and ROM is managed by kernel only. 

- It is the authority of the kernel to decide which program should get what access and at what level. 

- The operating state of the CPU is set up the kernel itself all the time. 

- It prepares the data to be stored in long term non–volatile storage like in flash memory, tapes, and disks and so on.

2. Program execution or process: 

- The OS is actually an interface between the hardware and the application software.

- An interaction between the two can be established only if the application abides by the rules and procedures of the operating system as programmed in to it. 

- It is another purpose of the operating system to provide a set of services for simplifying the execution as well as development of the programs. 

- Whenever a program is to be executed, a process is created by the kernel of the operating system and then other required resources such as memory are assigned to it. 

- A priority is assigned to this process if it is a multi–tasking environment. 

- The binary code for the program is loaded in to the memory and the execution is initiated.

3. Interrupts: 

- This component is the central requirement of the operating systems. 

- This is so because the interrupts provide a way of interaction between the OS and its environment which is not only reliable but also effective. 

- The older operating systems worked with very small stacks and therefore watched for the various input sources requiring action for initiating some event (called polling).

- This strategy is not useful in today’s OS that use very large stacks. 

- Here, interrupt - based programming is fruitful. 

- The modern CPU have in – built direct support for these interrupts. 

- With the use of interrupts, a computer knows when to automatically save the contexts of the local registers or run some specific code in response to the occurring events. 

- Hardware interrupts are supported by very basic of the computers. 

- Interrupts let the programmer to specify what code is to be run when a certain even occurs. 

- When hardware receives an interrupt, it automatically suspends the current program being executed by it. 

- The status of the program is saved and the code associated with the interrupt is executed. 

- In modern operating systems, the kernel is responsible for handling the interrupts. 

- Either of the running program or the computer’s hardware might raise an interrupt. 

- When an interrupt is triggered by a hardware device, it is left to the OS’s kernel to decide what to do now through execution of some code. 

- The code that has to be run is decided based up on the interrupt’s priority. 

- The device driver is the software to which all the task of the processing hardware interrupts is assigned. 

- A device driver might be a part of the kernel, or some other program or both.

Read the next post (What are different components of operating system? – Part 2)