Tech Differences

We have many external devices attached to the CPU like a mouse, keyboard, scanner, printer, etc. These devices also need CPU attention. Suppose, a CPU is busy in displaying a PDF and you click the window media player icon on the desktop. Though the CPU does not have any idea when an event like this would occur, but it has to respond to such inputs from the I/O devices. Interrupt and Polling are the two ways to handle the events generated by the devices that can happen at any moment while CPU … [Read more...]

Memory is a large array of bytes, where each byte has its own address. The memory allocation can be classified into two methods contiguous memory allocation and non-contiguous memory allocation. The major difference between Contiguous and Noncontiguous memory allocation is that the contiguous memory allocation assigns the consecutive blocks of memory to a process requesting for memory. On the contrary, the noncontiguous memory allocation assigns the separate memory blocks at a different … [Read more...]

Whenever a process is loaded or removed from the physical memory block, it creates a small hole in memory space which is called fragment. Due to fragmentation, the system fails in allocating the contiguous memory space to a process even though it have the requested amount of memory but, in a non-contiguous manner. The fragmentation is further classified into two categories Internal and External Fragmentation. Both the internal and external classification affects data accessing speed of the … [Read more...]

The memory management in the operating system is an essential functionality, which allows the allocation of memory to the processes for execution and deallocates the memory when the process is no longer needed. In this article, we will discuss two memory management schemes paging and segmentation. The basic difference between paging and segmentation is that, "page" is a fixed-sized block whereas, a "segment" is a variable-sized block. We will discuss some more differences between Paging and … [Read more...]

Spooling and buffering are the two ways by which I/O subsystems improve the performance and efficiency of the computer by using a storage space in main memory or on the disk. The basic difference between Spooling and Buffering is that Spooling overlaps the I/O of one job with the execution of another job while the buffering overlaps I/O of one job with the execution of the same job. Let us find some more differences between spooling and buffering with the help of comparison chart shown … [Read more...]

Process synchronization plays an important role in maintaining the consistency of shared data. Both the software and hardware solutions are present for handling critical section problem. But hardware solutions for critical section problem are quite difficult to implement. In today's article, we will discuss two software based solution to handle critical section problem i.e. Semaphore and Mutex. The basic difference between semaphore and mutex is that semaphore is a signalling mechanism i.e. … [Read more...]

Kernel is the core part of an operating system; it manages the system resources. Kernel is like a bridge between application and hardware of the computer. The Kernel can be classified further into two categories, Microkernel and Monolithic Kernel. Microkernel is the one in which user services and kernel services are kept in separate address space. However, in Monolithic kernel user services and kernel services both are kept in the same address space. Let us discuss some more differences … [Read more...]

It is the responsibility of CPU scheduler to allot a process to CPU whenever the CPU is in the idle state. The CPU scheduler selects a process from ready queue and allocates the process to CPU. The scheduling which takes place when a process switches from running state to ready state or from waiting state to ready state is called Preemptive Scheduling. On the other hand, the scheduling which takes place when a process terminates or switches from running to waiting for state this kind of CPU … [Read more...]