Process (computing) - Process Management in Multi-tasking Operating Systems

Process Management in Multi-tasking Operating Systems

A multitasking operating system may just switch between processes to give the appearance of many processes executing concurrently or simultaneously, though in fact only one process can be executing at any one time on a single-core CPU (unless using multithreading or other similar technology).

It is usual to associate a single process with a main program, and 'daughter' ('child') processes with any spin-off, parallel processes, which behave like asynchronous subroutines. A process is said to own resources, of which an image of its program (in memory) is one such resource. (Note, however, that in multiprocessing systems, many processes may run off of, or share, the same reentrant program at the same location in memory— but each process is said to own its own image of the program.)

Processes are often called "tasks" in embedded operating systems. The sense of "process" (or task) is "something that takes up time", as opposed to 'memory', which is "something that takes up space".

The above description applies to both processes managed by an operating system, and processes as defined by process calculi.

If a process requests something for which it must wait, it will be blocked. When the process is in the Blocked State, it is eligible for swapping to disk, but this is transparent in a virtual memory system, where blocks of memory values may be really on disk and not in main memory at any time. Note that even unused portions of active processes/tasks (executing programs) are eligible for swapping to disk. All parts of an executing program and its data do not have to be in physical memory for the associated process to be active.