System Design
Operating Systems
I’m learning system design and want to post a overview about operating system based on my understanding: File Systems, Virtual Memory, Memory Paging, and Instruction Execution Cycle
Table of Contents
Introduction
File Systems
Virtual Memory
Memory Paging
Instruction Execution Cycle
Conclusion
Introduction
An Operating System (OS) is the most crucial program that runs on a computer. It manages the computer’s memory, processes, and all of its software and hardware. It also facilitates communication between the user and the hardware components of the system. Today, we will delve deeper into four key aspects of an OS: File Systems, Virtual Memory, Memory Paging, and the Instruction Execution Cycle.
File Systems
A file system is a method and data structure that the OS uses to manage files on a disk or partition. It controls how data is stored and retrieved on a disk. Types of file systems include FAT32, NTFS, HFS+, ext4, etc. Each has different features, performance, security, and capacity handling characteristics. I’ve done a File system project in my operating system class.
Virtual Memory
Virtual memory is a memory management technique used by the OS which gives an application the impression that it has a large, contiguous working memory, while in fact, it might be fragmented and may overflow onto disk storage. It makes the application independent of the physical memory’s actual size.
Memory Paging
Paging is a memory management scheme implemented by the OS to enable the physical memory’s efficient utilization. It allows the physical address space of a process to be non-contiguous, breaking physical memory into fixed-size blocks called frames and logical memory into blocks of the same size called pages.
Instruction Execution Cycle
The Instruction Execution Cycle, also known as the fetch-decode-execute cycle, is the basic operational process of a computer. It is the process by which a computer retrieves a program instruction from its memory, determines what actions the instruction requires, and carries out those actions.
Conclusion
Operating systems are integral to computing. They manage various tasks to allow users to interact seamlessly with their hardware. Understanding the key aspects of an OS such as file systems, virtual memory, memory paging, and the instruction execution cycle can help users and developers leverage the OS for optimized performance.
