Co-operation

 Co-operation:

            Concurrent processes executing in the operating system allows for the processes to cooperate (both mutually and unfavorable) with other processes. Processes are cooperating if they can affect each other. The simplest one example of how this can happen is where two processes are using the same file. One process may be writing to a file, while another process is reading from the file so, what is being read may be affected by what is being written. Processes cooperate by sharing data. Cooperation is important for several reasons:

·         Information sharing: Several processes may need to access the same data (such as stored in a file.)

      Computation speedup: A task can often be run faster if it is broken into subtasks and distributed among different processes. For example - Consider a web server which may be serving many clients. Each client can have their own process or thread helping them. This allows the server to use the operating system to distribute the computer’s resources, including CPU time, among the many clients.

·         Modularity: It may be easier to organize a complex task into separate subtasks and then have different processes or threads running each subtask. For example, a single server process dedicated to a single client may have multiple threads running-each performing a different task for the client.

·         Convenience: An individual user can run several programs at the same time, to perform some tasks. For example, a network browser is open while the user has a remote terminal program running (such as telnet), and a word processing program editing data.

                Cooperation between processes requires mechanisms that allow processes to communicate data between each other and synchronize their actions, so they do not harmfully interfere with each other. The purpose of this note is to consider ways that processes can communicate data with each other, called Intercrosses Communication.