COMP 346  Assignment 3

COMP 346 
Assignment 3

Written Questions (50 marks):
Note:
1) You must submit the answers to all the questions below. However, only one or more questions,
possibly chosen at random, will be corrected and will be evaluated to the full 50 marks.
2) TAs will not be able to answer Theory Assignment related queries. Please get in touch with Professor
for any queries related to Theory Assignment.
3) Theory assignment to be completed individually.
Question # 1
Answer the following questions:
i. (a) What are relocatable programs? (b) What makes a program relocatable? (c) From the
OS memory management context, why programs (processes) need to be relocatable?
ii. What is (are) the advantage(s) and/or disadvantage(s) of small versus big page sizes?
iii. What is (are) the advantage(s) of paging over segmentation?
iv. What is (are) the advantage(s) of segmentation over paging?
Explain your answers.
Question # 2
Consider the below implementations of a semaphore’s wait and signal operations:
wait () {
disable interrupts;
sem.value--;
if (sem.value < 0) {
save_state (current) ; // current process
State[current] = Blocked; //A gets blocked
Enqueue(current, sem.queue);
current = select_from_ready_queue();
State[current] = Running;
restore_state (current); //B starts running
}
Enable interrupts;
}
signal(){
disable interrupts;
sem.value++;
if (sem.value <= 0){
k = Dequeue(sem.queue);
State[k] = Ready;
Enqueue (k, ReadyQueue);
 }
 Enable interrupts;
}
a) What are the critical sections inside the wait and signal operations which are protected by
disabling and enabling of interrupts?
b) Give example of a specific execution scenario for the above code leading to inconsistency if
the critical sections inside implementation of wait() and signal() are not protected (by
disabling of interrupts
c) Suppose that process A calling semaphore wait() gets blocked and another process B is
selected to run (refer to the above code). Since interrupts are enabled only at the completion
of the wait operation, will B start executing with the interrupts disabled? Explain your
answer.
Question # 3
Consider a demand-paged system where the page table for each process resides in main memory. In
addition, there is a fast associative memory (also known as TLB which stands for Translation Look-aside
Buffer) to speed up the translation process. Each single memory access takes 1 microsecond while each
TLB access takes 0.2 microseconds. Assume that 2% of the page requests lead to page faults, while 98%
are hits. On the average, page fault time is 20 milliseconds (includes everything: TLB/memory/disc access
time and transfer, and any context switch overhead). Out of the 98% page hits, 80 % of the accesses are
found in the TLB and the rest, 20%, are TLB misses. Calculate the effective memory access time for the
system.
Question # 4
Consider the page reference string Ʀ={0, 1, 2, 0, 1, 2, 0, 1, 2, 3, 6, 7, 6, 7, 0, 1, 2, 3, 4} for a given
process.
(a) Show the memory representation of the pages using the LRU algorithm and an allocation of 3
frames. How many page faults are there?
(b) Show the memory representation of the pages using the Belady Optimal algorithm and an
allocation of 3 frames. How many page faults are there?
(C) Show the memory representation of the pages using the working set model with a window
size ∆=3 (∆ indicates the maximum number allowed for a page to be in memory before being
replaced; i.e. if a page is not used for 3 consecutive times, then it must either be used/demanded
next, or it has to be removed). How many page faults are there?
Question # 5
Consider a system that would implement the page table on the CPU if feasible.
(a) Give an advantage of this strategy.
(b) Give a disadvantage of this strategy.
Question # 6
Explain (i) an advantage and (ii) a disadvantage that a global page replacement algorithm has over
a local page replacement algorithm.
Question # 7
Consider a system that adjusts the degree of multiprogramming by monitoring the mean time
between page faults (i.e. Tpf) and the mean time to service a page fault (i.e. Tfs). Describe the
performance of the paging system in terms of the degree of multiprogramming when (i) Tpf is
greater than Tfs, (ii) Tpf is less than Tfs and (iii) Tpf is equal to Tfs.
Question # 8
Some systems automatically open a file when it is referenced for the first time and close the
file when the job terminates. Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of this scheme as
compared to the more traditional one, where the user has to open and close the file explicitly.
Question # 9
a) What is the difference between preemptive and non-preemptive scheduling? Why is strict
non-preemptive scheduling unlikely to be used in a computer system that provides both batch
and timesharing service?
b) What is the trade-off used to select the quantum size, say, in pure Round-Robin scheduling?
Question # 10
What advantage is there in having different values of the scheduling quantum on different
levels of a multilevel feedback queuing system? Your answer should consider all aspects such
as fairness, starvation, efficiency, etc.
Question # 11
Consider the following set of prioritized processes, where a smaller priority value represents a
higher priority.
Process Service Time Priority
0 20 3
1 15 1
2 21 3
3 7 5
4 12 2
Assume that all processes arrived at the same time, however they are inserted in the ready list
in the order indicated in the above table.
a) Draw Gantt charts for the execution scenarios assuming:
- FCFS scheduling
- Non-preemptive SJF scheduling
- Non-preemptive priority scheduling
- Pure Round-Robin scheduling with the quantum = 3
b) What is the waiting time of each process in each case?
c) What is the response time of each process in each case?
d) What is the turn-around time of each process in each case?
Submission: Create a .zip file by name ta3_studentID.zip containing all the solutions, where ta3 is
the number of the assignment and studentID is your student ID number. Upload the .zip file on
moodle under TA3.
Programming assignment 3 (50 Marks)
________________________________________________________________________
Late Submission: No late submission
Teams: The assignment can be done individually or in teams of 2.
Submit only one assignment per team.
Purpose: The purpose of this assignment is to Implement the dining philosopher’s
 problem using a monitor for synchronization.
1 Source Code
There are five files that come with the assignment. A soft copy of the code is available to download from
the course web site. This time the source code is barely implemented (though compiles and runs). You
are to complete its implementation.
1.1 File Checklist
Files distributed with the assignmentrequirements:
common/BaseThread.java
unchanged DiningPhilosophers.java
the main() Philosopher.java - extends from BaseThread
Monitor.java - the monitor for the system
Makefile - take a look
2 Background
This assignment is a slight extension of the classical problem of synchronization – the Dining
Philosophers problem. You are going to solve it using the Monitor synchronization construct built on
top of Java’s synchronization primitives. The extension refers to the fact that sometimes philosophers
would like to talk, but only one (any) philosopher can be talking at a time while they are not eating. If
you need help, consult the references at the bottom.
3 Tasks
Make sure you put comments for every task that involves coding to the changes that you’ve made.
This will be considered in the grading process.
Task 1 (20%): The Philosopher Class
Complete the implementation of the Philosopher class, that is all its methods according to the comments
in the code. Specifically, eat(), think(), talk(), and run() methods have to be implemented entirely.
Non-mandatory hints are provided within the code.
Task 2 (60%): The Monitor
Implement the Monitor class for the problem. Make sure it is correct, deadlock- and starvation-free
implementation that uses Java’s synchronization primitives, such as wait() and notifyAll(); no use of
Semaphore objects is allowed. Implement the four methods of the Monitor class; specifically, pickUp(),
putDown(), requestTalk(), and endTalk(). Add as many member variables and methods to monitor the
conditions outlined below as needed:
1. A philosopher is allowed to pickup the chopsticks if they are both available. That
implies having states of each philosopher as presented in your book. You might want to
consider the order in which to pick the chopsticks up.
2. If a given philosopher has decided to make a statement, they can only do so if no one else
is talking at the moment. The philosopher wishing to make the statement has to wait in that
case.
Task 3 (20%): Variable Number of Philosophers
Make the application to accept a positive integer number from the command line, and spawn exactly
that number of philosophers instead of the default one. If there are no command line arguments, the
given default should be used. If the argument is not a positive integer, report this fact to the user, print
the usage information as in the example below:
% java DiningPhilosophers -7.a
"-7.a" is not a positive decimal integer
Usage: java DiningPhilosophers [NUMBER_OF_PHILOSOPHERS]
%
Use Integer.parseInt() method to extract an int value from a character string.
Test your implementation with varied number of philosophers. Submit your output.
• Submission.
o Create one zip file, containing the necessary files (.java, .txt and test cases). If the
assignment is done individually, your file should be called pa3_studentID, where pa3
is the number of the assignment and studentID is your student ID number. If the work
is done in a team of 2 people, the zip file should be called pa3_studentID1_studentID2
where studentID1 and studentID2 are the student ID numbers of each student.
o Upload your zip file on moodle under the PA3.
4 References
1. Java API: http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.3/docs/api/
2. http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/essential/TOC.html#threads