Device management allows the OS to provide a uniform interface for accessing different hardware devices. It manages I/O devices through device drivers that hide the complexity of devices from the OS. Devices use memory-mapped I/O or dedicated addresses. Devices are accessed through polling, interrupts, DMA, or double buffering. Hard disks have complex internal structures like platters, tracks, sectors, and zones, and disk performance depends on seek time, rotational latency, and transfer rate. Disk scheduling algorithms like SSTF aim to minimize seek distances.
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Lecture Notes for Device management in Operating Systems
2. So far
We have covered CPU and memory
management
Computing is not interesting without I/Os
Device management: the OS component
that manages hardware devices
Provides a uniform interface to access devices
with different physical characteristics
Optimize the performance of individual devices
3. I/O hardware
I/O device hardware
Many varieties
Device controller
Conversion a block of bytes and I/O operations
Performs error correction if necessary
Expose hardware registers to control the device
Typically have four registers:
Data-in register to be read to get input
Data-out register to be written to send output
Status register (allows the status of the device to be
checked)
Control register (controls the command the device
performs)
4. Device Addressing
How the CPU addresses the device
registers?
Two approaches
Dedicated range of device addresses in the
physical memory
Requires special hardware instructions associated with
individual devices
Memory-mapped I/O: makes no distinction
between device addresses and memory addresses
Devices can be accessed the same way as normal
memory, with the same set of hardware instructions
6. Ways to Access a Device
How to input and output data to and from
an I/O device?
Polling: a CPU repeatedly checks the
status of a device for exchanging data
+ Simple
- Busy-waiting
7. Ways to Access a Device
Interrupt-driven I/Os: A device controller
notifies the corresponding device driver
when the device is available
+ More efficient use of CPU cycles
- Data copying and movements
- Slow for character devices (i.e., one interrupt
per keyboard input)
8. Ways to Access a Device
Direct memory access (DMA): uses an
additional controller to perform data
movements
+ CPU is not involved in copying data
- I/O device is much more complicated (need to
have the ability to access memory).
- A process cannot access in-transit data
9. Ways to Access a Device
Double buffering: uses two buffers.
While one is being used, the other is being
filled.
Analogy: pipelining
Extensively used for graphics and animation
So a viewer does not see the line-by-line scanning
10. Device Driver
An OS component that is responsible for
hiding the complexity of an I/O device
So that the OS can access various
devices in a uniform manner
11. Types of IO devices
Two categories
A block device stores information in fixed-size blocks, each
one with its own address
e.g., disks
A character device delivers or accepts a stream of
characters, and individual characters are not addressable
e.g., keyboards, printers, network cards
Device driver provides interface for these two types of
devices
Other OS components see block devices and character
devices, but not the details of the devices.
How to effectively utilize the device is the responsibility of the
device driver
12. Device Driver Illustrated
User applications
Various OS components
Device drivers
Device controllers
I/O devices
User level
OS level
Hardware level
13. Disk as An Example Device
30-year-old storage technology
Incredibly complicated
A modern drive
250,000 lines of micro code
15. Disk Characteristics
Disk arm: moves a comb of disk heads
Only one disk head is active for reading/writing
Disk
platters
Disk arm
Disk heads
16. Hard Disk Trivia
Aerodynamically designed to fly
As close to the surface as possible
No room for air molecules
Therefore, hard drives are filled with
special inert gas
If head touches the surface
Head crash
Scrapes off magnetic information
18. Disk Characteristics
A track is further divided into sectors. A
sector is the smallest unit of disk storage
Disk
platters
Disk arm
Disk heads
Track
Sector
19. Disk Characteristics
A cylinder consists of all tracks with a
given disk arm position
Disk
platters
Disk arm
Disk heads
Track
Sector
Cylinder
21. Disk Characteristics
Zone-bit recording: zones near the edge
of a disk store more information (higher
bandwidth)
Disk
platters
Disk arm
Disk heads
Track
Sector
Cylinder
Zones
22. More About Hard Drives Than You Ever
Want to Know
Track skew: starting position of each track is
slightly skewed
Minimize rotational delay when sequentially transferring
bytes across tracks
Thermo-calibrations: periodically performed to
account for changes of disk radius due to
temperature changes
Typically 100 to 1,000 bits are inserted between
sectors to account for minor inaccuracies
23. Disk Access Time
Seek time: the time to position disk
heads (~8 msec on average)
Rotational latency: the time to rotate the
target sector to underneath the head
Assume 7,200 rotations per minute (RPM)
7,200 / 60 = 120 rotations per second
1/120 = ~8 msec per rotation
Average rotational delay is ~4 msec
24. Disk Access Time
Transfer time: the time to transfer bytes
Assumptions:
58 Mbytes/sec
4-Kbyte disk blocks
Time to transfer a block takes 0.07 msec
Disk access time
Seek time + rotational delay + transfer time
26. Examples of Disk Access Times
If disk blocks are randomly accessed
Average disk access time = ~12 msec
Assume 4-Kbyte blocks
4 Kbyte / 12 msec = ~340 Kbyte/sec
If disk blocks of the same cylinder are
randomly accessed without disk seeks
Average disk access time = ~4 msec
4 Kbyte / 4 msec = ~ 1 Mbyte/sec
27. Examples of Disk Access Times
If disk blocks are accessed sequentially
Without seeks and rotational delays
Bandwidth: 58 Mbytes/sec
Key to good disk performance
Minimize seek time and rotational latency
28. Disk Tradeoffs
Larger sector size better bandwidth
Wasteful if only 1 byte out of 1 Mbyte is
needed
Sector size Space utilization Transfer rate
1 byte 8 bits/1008 bits (0.8%) 80 bytes/sec (1 byte / 12 msec)
4 Kbytes 4096 bytes/4221 bytes (97%) 340 Kbytes/sec (4 Kbytes / 12 msec)
1 Mbyte (~100%) 58 Mbytes/sec (peak bandwidth)
29. Disk Controller
Few popular standards
IDE (integrated device electronics)
ATA (AT attachment interface)
SCSI (small computer systems interface)
Differences
Performance
Parallelism
30. Disk Device Driver
Major goal: reduce seek time for disk
accesses
Schedule disk request to minimize disk arm
movements
31. Disk Arm Scheduling Policies
First come, first serve (FCFS): requests
are served in the order of arrival
+ Fair among requesters
- Poor for accesses to random disk blocks
Shortest seek time first (SSTF): picks
the request that is closest to the current
disk arm position
+ Good at reducing seeks
- May result in starvation
32. Disk Arm Scheduling Policies
SCAN: takes the closest request in the
direction of travel (an example of elevator
algorithm)
+ no starvation
- a new request can wait for almost two full
scans of the disk
33. Disk Arm Scheduling Policies
Circular SCAN (C-SCAN): disk arm
always serves requests by scanning in
one direction.
Once the arm finishes scanning for one
direction
Returns to the 0th track for the next round of
scanning
34. First Come, First Serve
Request queue: 3, 6, 1, 0, 7
Head start position: 2
Total seek distance: 1 + 3 + 5 + 1 + 7 =
17
Tracks
0
5
4
3
2
1
6
7
Time
35. Shortest Seek Distance First
Request queue: 3, 6, 1, 0, 7
Head start position: 2
Total seek distance: 1 + 2 + 1 + 6 + 1 =
10
Tracks
0
5
4
3
2
1
6
7
Time
38. Look and C-Look
Similar to SCAN and C-SCAN
the arm goes only as far as the final request in
each direction, then turns around
Look for a request before continuing to move in a
given direction.