Question 1:

(a) Explain two reasons driving the creation of processes.

(b) Suppose we want a system to have two ready states: the normal ready state and the system ready state. Processes in the system ready state have the highest priority in the system and execute in a round robin fashion; the CPU scheduling algorithm gives priority to processes in this state and these system processes are never swapped. Draw the resulting process state transition diagram, and label each transition.

(c) Discuss about three types of "Process Control Information" part of the process control block.

(d) Explain two benefits of a system making use of threads compared to a system using exclusively processes.

(e) Explain three advantages of making use of user level threads.

Question 2:

a) By making use of an appropriate example, explain issues which the principle of concurrency in an operating system may generate.

b) Compare and contrast between the control problems of deadlock and starvation.

c) Explain three possible semaphores.

d) Explain three policy conditions which could lead to deadlocks.

e) Explain the concepts of consumable and reusable resources.

f) Discuss the implications following techniques associated with deadlocks, namely

i. deadlock avoidance,
ii. deadlock prevention and
iii. deadlock detection.

Question 3:

(a) Discuss about the following scheduling policies:

i. Round robin
ii. Multi-level feedback queue
iii. Load sharing

(b) Explain any two possible requirements operating systems use to decide upon scheduling policies to be adopted.

(c) Compare and contrast between the following memory management techniques:

i. Partitioning
ii. Paging
iii. Segmentation

(d) Explain four possible page replacement policies used with virtual memory.