Explain Process Control Block (PCB) | Operating System

 Explain Process Control Block (PCB)

What is Process Control Block (PCB)?

1. Process Control block is used for accumulating the information about the Processes and this is also called as the Data Structure which stores the information about the process.

2. The information of the process is used by the CPU at the Run time. 

3. The various information which is stored into the PCB like name of the Process, State of the Process. 

Means Ready, Active, Wait.

1. A Process Control Block (PCB) is a data structure used by the operating system to store information about a process. 

2. When a process is created, the operating system allocates a PCB for the process and stores information about the process in the PCB. 

3. The PCB is used by the operating system to manage the execution of processes. 

4. When a process is scheduled for execution, the operating system loads the PCB into memory and uses the information in the PCB to set up the process environment, including restoring the CPU registers and memory management settings.

5. The PCB is also used by the operating system to manage process scheduling and synchronization. 

6. The operating system uses the information in the PCB to determine which process to run next and to ensure that processes do not interfere with each other by accessing shared resources at the same time.

The information stored in the PCB includes:

Process State: This indicates the current state of the process, such as running, blocked, or ready.

Process Identifier (PID): A unique identifier assigned by the operating system to identify the process.

Program Counter (PC): The address of the next instruction to be executed by the process.

CPU Registers: The values stored in the CPU registers for the process.

Memory Management Information: This includes the base and limit registers used by the memory management unit to access the process's memory.

I/O Status Information: This includes information about I/O devices being used by the process, such as the status of any open files.

Accounting Information: This includes statistics about the process, such as CPU time used and the amount of memory used.