Operating Systems

ECEG-5202

I/O MANAGEMENT
Outline
▪I/O Devices
▪Principles of I/O software
▪I/O Buffering
▪Disk cache

January 2, 2023 IO MANAGEMENT 2

I/O devices
Categories of external devices that engage in I/O
◦ Human readable
◦ Suitable for communication with the computer user
◦ Example: Printer, keyboard, and mouse
◦ Machine readable
◦ Suitable for communicating with electronic equipment
◦ Example: disk drives, USB sticks, sensors, …
◦ Communication
◦ Suitable for communicating with remote devices
◦ Example: modem

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 I/O devices…
Differences in I/O devices
◦ Data rate
◦ Data transfer rate

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 I/O devices…
Differences in I/O devices…
◦ Application
◦ The use to which a device is put has an influence on the software and policies in the OS and supporting utilities
◦ E.g., disk used for files vs. disk used for backup
◦ Complexity of control
◦ Disk requires more complex I/O module than printer (for example)
◦ Unit of transfer
◦ Data may be transferred as a stream of bytes or characters (e.g., terminal I/O) or in larger blocks (e.g., disk I/O)
◦ Data representation
◦ Different data encoding schemes are used by different devices, including differences in character code and parity
conventions
◦ Error conditions
◦ The nature of errors, the way in which they are reported, their consequences, and the available range of
responses differ widely from one device to another

=> Uniform and consistent approach to I/O from the point of view of both the OS and
the user processes is difficult to achieve

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 I/O devices…
Recap: I/O techniques
◦ Programmed I/O
◦ The processor issues an I/O command, on behalf of a process, to an I/O module
◦ The process then busy waits for the operation to be completed before proceeding
◦ Interrupt-driven I/O
◦ I/O module will interrupt the processor and request to exchange data
◦ Requires active intervention of the processor to transfer data between memory and an I/O module
◦ Direct memory access (DMA)
◦ A DMA module controls the exchange of data between main memory and an I/O module
◦ The processor sends a request for the transfer of a block of data to the DMA module and is interrupted
only after the entire block has been transferred

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 Principles of I/O software
Goals of I/O software design
◦ Device independence
◦ Allows to be able to write programs that can access I/O devices without having to specify the device in
advance
◦ Uniform naming
◦ Name of a file or a device should simply be a string or an integer and not depend on the device in any way
◦ Error handling
◦ Errors should be handled as close to the hardware as possible
◦ Example
◦ If controller discovers a read error, it should try to correct the error itself if it can. If it cannot, then the
device driver should handle it

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 Principles of I/O software…
Goals of I/O software design…
◦ Synchronous (blocking) vs. asynchronous (interrupt-driven)
◦ Most physical I/O is asynchronous
◦ Asynchronous—the CPU starts the transfer and goes off to do something else until the interrupt arrives
◦ User programs are easier to write if I/O operations are blocking
◦ Blocking —after a read system call the program is automatically suspended until the data are available
in the buffer
◦ OS makes operations that are interrupt-driven look blocking to the user programs
◦ Buffering
◦ Often data that come off a device cannot be stored directly in their final destination (e.g., packets)
◦ Some devices have several real-time constraints
◦ Example
◦ Digital audio devices try to avoid data overruns
◦ Data must be put into an output buffer in advance to decouple the rate at which the buffer is filled
from the rate at which it is emptied
◦ Involves a major copying and often has a major impact on I/O performance

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Principles of I/O software…
Goals of I/O design…
◦ Shareable vs. dedicated devices
◦ Some I/O devices are used by many users at the same time
◦ E.g., disks
◦ Some I/O devices have to be dedicated to a single user until that user is finished
◦ E.g., printer
◦ OS should be able to handle both types of devices

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 Principles of I/O software…
Logical structure of I/O function
◦ I/O facility could be organized using
layers
◦ Most common logical structures

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 Principles of I/O software…
Logical structure of I/O function
◦ Local peripheral device (a)
◦ Communicates in a simple fashion such as a stream of bytes or records
◦ Logical I/O
◦ Deals with the device as a logical resource and is not concerned with the details of actually controlling
the device
◦ Concerned with managing general I/O functions on behalf of user processes
◦ Allows them to deal with the device in terms of a device identifier and simple commands such as
open, close, read, and write
◦ Device I/O
◦ Requested operations and data (buffered characters, records, etc.) are converted into appropriate
sequences of I/O instructions, channel commands, and controller order
◦ Buffering technique may be used to improve utilization

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Principles of I/O software…
Logical structure of I/O function…
◦ Local peripheral device (a)…
◦ Scheduling and control
◦ Queuing, controlling and scheduling of I/O operations occur at this layer,
◦ Interrupts are handled at this layer
◦ Is the layer of the software that interacts with the device hardware
◦ Communication port (b)
◦ Same as the local peripheral device
◦ Logical I/O module is replaced by a communications architecture which contains different layers
(e.g., TCP/IP layer)

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Principles of I/O software…
Logical structure of I/O function…
◦ File system (c)
◦ In addition to the layers discussed above
◦ Directory management
◦ Symbolic file names are converted to identifiers that reference the file
◦ Concerned with user operations that affect the directory of files (e.g., add, delete, …)
◦ File system
◦ Deals with logical structure of files and with the operations that can be specified by users
(e.g., open, close, read, …)
◦ Access right is managed at this layer
◦ Physical organization
◦ Allocation of secondary storage space and main storage buffers
◦ Address translation from logical to physical

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I/O buffering
Type of I/O devices
◦ Block-oriented
◦ Information is stored in fixed sized blocks
◦ Transfers are made a block at a time
◦ Used in disks
◦ Stream-oriented
◦ Transfer information as a stream of bytes
◦ Used for terminals, printers, communication ports, mouse, and most other devices that are not
secondary storage

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I/O buffering…
Problems during an I/O operation
◦ Processes must wait for I/O to complete before proceeding
◦ I/O is usually slow
◦ Certain pages must remain in main memory during I/O
◦ Used while transferring data
◦ Portion of the process containing the target location must be locked into main memory

How to avoid these overheads and inefficiencies?

◦ Perform input transfers in advance of requests being made
◦ Perform output transfers some time after the request is made

=> Buffering

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 I/O buffering…
Single buffer
◦ Operating system assigns a buffer in main memory for an I/O request
◦ Buffering scheme for block-oriented I/O
◦ Input transfers are made to the system buffer
◦ When transfer is completed, the process moves the block to user space and another block is moved into
the buffer
=> Called Read ahead (anticipated input)
◦ Done in expectation that the next block will eventually be needed
◦ Usually data is read sequentially

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I/O buffering…
Single buffer…
◦ Buffering scheme for block-oriented I/O…
◦ Block-oriented output
◦ When data is transmitted to a device
1. Copied from the user space into system buffer
2. Write the data from the system buffer
◦ Advantage
◦ User process can be processing one block of data while the next block is being read in
◦ OS could swap the process out because the input operation is taking place in system memory
rather than process memory
◦ Disadvantage
◦ Complicates the logic in the OS – The OS must keep track of the assignment of system buffers
to user processes
◦ If the I/O operation involves the same disk that is used for swapping, it hardly makes sense to
queue disk writes to the same device for swapping the process out

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I/O buffering…
Single buffer…
◦ Buffering scheme for stream-oriented I/O
◦ Can be used in a
◦ Line-at-a-time fashion
◦ Buffer can be used to hold a single line
◦ User process is suspended during input, awaiting the arrival of the entire line
◦ User process places a line of output in the buffer and continue processing
◦ User process need not be suspended unless it has a second line of output to send before
the buffer is emptied
◦ E.g., line printer, one line user input with a carriage return
◦ Byte-at-a-time fashion
◦ Used when each keystroke is significant
◦ E.g., peripherals such as sensors and controllers
◦ Interaction between the OS and the user process follows the producer-consumer model

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 I/O buffering…
Double buffering (buffer swapping)
◦ Improvement over the single buffer approach
◦ Uses two system buffers instead of one
◦ A process transfers data to (or from) one buffer while the OS empties (or fills) the
other
◦ Ensures that the process doesn’t have to wait on I/O
◦ Achieved at the cost of increased complexity
◦ For block oriented I/O there is improvement
◦ For stream oriented I/O the improvement is observed only for line-at-a-time I/O

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 I/O buffering…
Circular buffering
◦ Double buffering may be inadequate if the process performs rapid bursts of I/O
◦ Solution
◦ Use more than two buffers, which are referred to as a circular buffer
◦ Each individual buffer is one unit in a circular buffer
◦ Used when I/O operation must keep up with process

January 2, 2023 IO MANAGEMENT 20

Disk cache
Recap
◦ What is cache memory?
◦ Memory that is smaller and faster than main memory
◦ Located between main memory and the processor
◦ Reduces average memory access time by exploiting the principle of locality

Same concept goes for disk cache

Disk cache
◦ Is a buffer in main memory for disk sectors
◦ Contains a copy of some of the sectors on the disk
◦ When I/O request is made for a particular sector, a check is made to
determine if the sector is in the disk cache

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Disk cache…
Design considerations
◦ When an I/O request is satisfied, from where should the process access the
data?
◦ Transfer the block of data within main memory from disk cache to memory assigned to the user
process
◦ Use a shared memory capability and passing a pointer to the appropriate slot in the disk cache
◦ Saves the time of memory-to-memory transfer
◦ Allows shared access by other processes

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 Disk cache…
Design considerations…
◦ Which existing block in the cache to replace with a new block?
◦ When a new sector is brought into the disk cache, one of the existing blocks must be replaced
◦ Least recently used (LRU)
◦ Most commonly used algorithm
◦ Replace the block that has been in the cache longest with no reference to it
◦ Removes the block at the bottom of the stack and pushes a new (recently accessed) block on the top
◦ Least frequently used (LFU)
◦ Replaces the block in the set that has experienced the fewest references
◦ Implemented by associating a counter with each block
◦ Weakness
◦ Certain blocks could be referenced relatively infrequently, but when they are referenced, there are
short intervals of repeated references
=> Doesn’t reflect the probability that the block will soon be referenced again, resulting in poor
replacement algorithm

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 Disk cache…
Design considerations…
◦ Which existing block in the cache to replace with a new block...
◦ Least frequently used (LFU) …
◦ Improvement
◦ Logically organized similar to LRU
◦ The stack is divided into two sections: New section and Old section
◦ Reference count is incremented only when a block is moved from old section to new section
◦ On a miss, a block with small reference count and in the old section will be replaced

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Disk cache…
Design considerations…
◦ Which existing block in the cache to replace with a new block...
◦ Least frequently used (LFU) …
◦ Problem
◦ May not have sufficiently long interval for blocks aging out of the new section to build up
their reference counts
◦ Replacement could take place
◦ On demand
◦ Sector replace only when the slot is needed
◦ Preplanned
◦ Number of slots are released at a time
◦ If the sector is updated, there is a need to write back sectors
◦ Clusters the writing and order the writing to minimize seek time

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 Disk cache…
Performance consideration
◦ Focus
◦ Whether a given miss ratio can be achieved
◦ Depends on
◦ Locality behavior of the disk references
◦ Replacement algorithm
◦ Other design considerations such as block size
◦ Miss ratio is a function of the size of the
disk cache
◦ Example
◦ Some disk cache performance results using LRU

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Acknowledgment
These slides are adopted from the slides of
Surafel Lemma Abebe (Ph. D.)

Here, I would like to acknowledge and thank him for allowing me to

customize and use the slides for this course.

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