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Thread Control Block
{{unreferenced, date=February 2013 Thread Control Block (TCB) is a data structure in the operating system kernel which contains thread-specific information needed to manage it. The TCB is "the manifestation of a thread in an operating system." An example of information contained within a TCB is: * Thread Identifier: Unique id (tid) is assigned to every new thread * Stack pointer: Points to thread's stack in the process * Program counter: Points to the current program instruction of the thread * State of the thread (running, ready, waiting, start, done) * Thread's register values * Pointer to the Process control block (PCB) of the process that the thread lives on The Thread Control Block acts as a library of information about the threads in a system. Specific information is stored in the thread control block highlighting important information about each process. See also * Parallel Thread Execution * Process control block A process control block (PCB) is a data structure use ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Data Structure
In computer science, a data structure is a data organization, management, and storage format that is usually chosen for efficient access to data. More precisely, a data structure is a collection of data values, the relationships among them, and the functions or operations that can be applied to the data, i.e., it is an algebraic structure about data. Usage Data structures serve as the basis for abstract data types (ADT). The ADT defines the logical form of the data type. The data structure implements the physical form of the data type. Different types of data structures are suited to different kinds of applications, and some are highly specialized to specific tasks. For example, relational databases commonly use B-tree indexes for data retrieval, while compiler implementations usually use hash tables to look up identifiers. Data structures provide a means to manage large amounts of data efficiently for uses such as large databases and internet indexing services. Usually, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Operating System Kernel
The kernel is a computer program at the core of a computer's operating system and generally has complete control over everything in the system. It is the portion of the operating system code that is always resident in memory and facilitates interactions between hardware and software components. A full kernel controls all hardware resources (e.g. I/O, memory, cryptography) via device drivers, arbitrates conflicts between processes concerning such resources, and optimizes the utilization of common resources e.g. CPU & cache usage, file systems, and network sockets. On most systems, the kernel is one of the first programs loaded on startup (after the bootloader). It handles the rest of startup as well as memory, peripherals, and input/output (I/O) requests from software, translating them into data-processing instructions for the central processing unit. The critical code of the kernel is usually loaded into a separate area of memory, which is protected from access by applicati ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thread (computing)
In computer science, a thread of execution is the smallest sequence of programmed instructions that can be managed independently by a scheduler, which is typically a part of the operating system. The implementation of threads and processes differs between operating systems. In Modern Operating Systems, Tanenbaum shows that many distinct models of process organization are possible.TANENBAUM, Andrew S. Modern Operating Systems. 1992. Prentice-Hall International Editions, ISBN 0-13-595752-4. In many cases, a thread is a component of a process. The multiple threads of a given process may be executed concurrently (via multithreading capabilities), sharing resources such as memory, while different processes do not share these resources. In particular, the threads of a process share its executable code and the values of its dynamically allocated variables and non- thread-local global variables at any given time. History Threads made an early appearance under the name of "tasks ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stack Pointer
In computer science, a call stack is a stack data structure that stores information about the active subroutines of a computer program. This kind of stack is also known as an execution stack, program stack, control stack, run-time stack, or machine stack, and is often shortened to just "the stack". Although maintenance of the call stack is important for the proper functioning of most software, the details are normally hidden and automatic in high-level programming languages. Many computer instruction sets provide special instructions for manipulating stacks. A call stack is used for several related purposes, but the main reason for having one is to keep track of the point to which each active subroutine should return control when it finishes executing. An active subroutine is one that has been called, but is yet to complete execution, after which control should be handed back to the point of call. Such activations of subroutines may be nested to any level (recursive as a special ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Program Counter
The program counter (PC), commonly called the instruction pointer (IP) in Intel x86 and Itanium microprocessors, and sometimes called the instruction address register (IAR), the instruction counter, or just part of the instruction sequencer, is a processor register that indicates where a computer is in its program sequence. Usually, the PC is incremented after fetching an instruction, and holds the memory address of (" points to") the next instruction that would be executed. Processors usually fetch instructions sequentially from memory, but ''control transfer'' instructions change the sequence by placing a new value in the PC. These include branches (sometimes called jumps), subroutine calls, and returns. A transfer that is conditional on the truth of some assertion lets the computer follow a different sequence under different conditions. A branch provides that the next instruction is fetched from elsewhere in memory. A subroutine call not only branches but saves the preced ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Processor Register
A processor register is a quickly accessible location available to a computer's processor. Registers usually consist of a small amount of fast storage, although some registers have specific hardware functions, and may be read-only or write-only. In computer architecture, registers are typically addressed by mechanisms other than main memory, but may in some cases be assigned a memory address e.g. DEC PDP-10, ICT 1900. Almost all computers, whether load/store architecture or not, load data from a larger memory into registers where it is used for arithmetic operations and is manipulated or tested by machine instructions. Manipulated data is then often stored back to main memory, either by the same instruction or by a subsequent one. Modern processors use either static or dynamic RAM as main memory, with the latter usually accessed via one or more cache levels. Processor registers are normally at the top of the memory hierarchy, and provide the fastest way to access data. The ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Process Control Block
A process control block (PCB) is a data structure used by computer operating systems to store all the information about a process. It is also known as a process descriptor. When a process is created (initialized or installed), the operating system creates a corresponding process control block. This specifies the process state i.e. new, ready, running, waiting or terminated. Role The role of the PCBs is central in process management: they are accessed and/or modified by most utilities, particularly those involved with scheduling and resource management. Structure In multitasking operating systems, the PCB stores data needed for correct and efficient process management. Though the details of these structures are system-dependent, common elements fall in three main categories: * Process identification * Process state * Process control Status tables exist for each relevant entity, like describing memory, I/O devices, files and processes. Memory tables, for example, contain infor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Parallel Thread Execution
Parallel Thread Execution (PTX or NVPTX) is a low-level parallel thread execution virtual machine and instruction set architecture used in Nvidia's CUDA programming environment. The NVCC compiler translates code written in CUDA, a C++-like language, into PTX instructions (an assembly language represented as ASCII text), and the graphics driver contains a compiler which translates the PTX instructions into the executable binary code which can be run on the processing cores of Nvidia GPUs. The GNU Compiler Collection also has basic ability for PTX generation in the context of OpenMP offloading. Inline PTX assembly can be used in CUDA. Registers PTX uses an arbitrarily large register set; the output from the compiler is almost pure single-assignment form, with consecutive lines generally referring to consecutive registers. Programs start with declarations of the form .reg .u32 %r; // declare 335 registers %r0, %r1, ..., %r334 of type unsigned 32-bit integer It i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
