Process States and the Process State Graph

 

 

Processes

-         a program in execution (simple definition)

-         a process is an active entity, while a program is a static entity

 

Process States

-         Each process may be in one of the following states:

 

-         New:  The process is being created

-         Running:  Instructions are being executed.

-         Waiting:  The process is waiting for some event to occur (such as an I/O completion)

-         Ready:  The process is ready to execute, but it must wait to be assigned to the processor

-          Terminated:  The process has finished execution.

 

Process State Graph

-          The process state graph is a conceptual model of how a process can change states.  It does not correspond directly to a data structure in the operating system.