What is Context switch?
Switching the process or thread running on a CPU. Registers, the program counter and other state are saved and restored, and switching processes also switches address spaces.
Field: OS & Hardware
Context switch in the explanations
A context switch saves CPU state, such as general registers, the program counter, the stack pointer and the operating mode, so the process can later resume exactly where it left off, and loads the state of the next process.
During a context switch, what must be saved for the process…A context switch changes which process runs, and demand paging loads pages only when needed.
What is the mechanism by which applications ask the OS to p…It wastes no CPU while waiting, so it suits long waits, but sleeping, waking and the context switch cost several microseconds.
Which correctly compares a mutex (a lock that sleeps while …
Questions that mention Context switch (4)
- During a context switch, what must be saved for the process being switched out?
- Why can a process context switch degrade performance more than the time spent saving and restoring registers would suggest?
- What is the mechanism by which applications ask the OS to perform tasks such as file I/O?
- Which correctly compares a mutex (a lock that sleeps while waiting) with a spinlock?
Related terms
Stack pointer Page table TLB (translation lookaside buffer) Privileged mode Demand paging Mutex Spinlock ASID Copy-on-write Device driver