What is Special Purpose System?




Special-Purpose Systems - Distributed Systems
The discussion thus far has focused on general-purpose computer systems that we are all familiar with. There are, however, different classes of computer systems whose functions are more limited and whose objective is to deal with limited computation domains.
1 Real-Time Embedded Systems
Embedded computers are the most prevalent form of computers in existence. These devices are found everywhere, from car engines and manufacturing robots to VCRs and microwave ovens. They tend to have very specific tasks. The systems they run on are usually primitive, and so the operating systems provide limited features. Usually, they have little or no user interface, preferring to spend their time monitoring and managing hardware devices, such as automobile engines and robotic arms. These embedded systems vary considerably. Some are general-purpose computers, running standard operating systems—such as UNIX—with special-purpose applications to implement the functionality. Others are hardware devices with a special-purpose embedded operating system providing just the functionality desired. Yet others are hardware devices with application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) that perform their tasks without an operating system.
The use of embedded systems continues to expand. The power of these devices, both as standalone units and as members of networks and the Web, is sure to increase as well. Even now, entire houses can be computerized, so that a central computer—either a general-purpose computer or an embedded system—can control heating and lighting, alarm systems, and even coffee makers. Web access can enable a home owner to tell the house to heat up before she arrives home. Someday, the refrigerator may call the grocery store when it notices the milk is gone.
Embedded systems almost always run real-time operating systems. A real-time system is used when rigid time requirements have been placed on the operation of a processor or the flow of data; thus, it is often used as a control device in a dedicated application. Sensors bring data to the computer. The computer must analyze the data and possibly adjust controls to modify
the sensor inputs. Systems that control scientific experiments, medical imaging systems, industrial control systems, and certain display systems are real-time systems. Some automobile-engine fuel-injection systems, home-appliance controllers, and weapon systems are also real-time systems. A real-time system has well-defined, fixed time constraints. Processing
mustbe done within the defined constraints, or the system will fail. For instance, it would not do for a robot arm to be instructed to halt after it had smashed into the car it was building. A real-time system functions correctly only if it returns the correct result within its time constraints. Contrast this system with a time-sharing system, where it is desirable (but not mandatory) to respond quickly, or a batch system, which may have no time constraints at all.
2 Multimedia Systems
Most operating systems are designed to handle conventional data such as text files, programs, word-processing documents, and spreadsheets. However, a recent trend in technology is the incorporation of multimedia data into computer systems. Multimedia data consist of audio and video files as well as conventional files. These data differ from conventional data in that multimedia data—such as frames of video—must be delivered (streamed) according to certain time restrictions (for example, 30 frames per second). Multimedia describes a wide range of applications that are in popular use today. These include audio files such as MP3 DVD movies, video conferencing, and short video clips of movie previews or news stories downloaded over the Internet. Multimedia applications may also include live webcasts (broadcasting over the World Wide Web) of speeches or sporting events and even live webcams that allow a viewer in Manhattan to observe customers at a cafe in Paris. Multimedia applications need not be either audio or video; rather, a multimedia application often includes a combination of both. For example, a movie may consist of separate audio and video tracks. Nor must multimedia applications be delivered only to desktop personal computers. Increasingly, they are being directed toward smaller devices, including PDAs and cellular telephones. For example, a stock trader may have stock quotes delivered wirelessly and in real time to his PDA.
3 Handheld Systems
Handheld systems include personal digital assistants (PDAs), such as Palm and Pocket-PCs, and cellular telephones, many of which use special-purpose embedded operating systems. Developers of handheld systems and applications face many challenges, most of which are due to the limited size of such devices. For example, a PDA is typically about 5 inches in height and 3 inches in width, and it weighs less than one-half pound. Because of their size, most handheld devices have a small amount of memory, slow processors, and small display screens. We will take a look now at each of these limitations. The amount of physical memory in a handheld depends upon the device, but typically is is somewhere between 512 KB and 128 MB. (Contrast this with a typical PC or workstation, which may have several gigabytes of memory!) As a result, the operating system and applications must manage memory efficiently. This includes returning all allocated memory back to the memory manager when the memory is not being used. virtual memory allows developers to write programs that behave as if the system has more memory than is physically available. Currently, not many handheld devices use virtual memory techniques, so program developers must work within the confines of limited physical memory. A second issue of concern to developers of handheld devices is the speed of the processor used in the devices. Processors for most handheld devices run at a fraction of the speed of a processor in a PC. Faster processors require more power. To include a faster processor in a handheld device would require a larger battery, which would take up more space and would have to be replaced (or recharged) more frequently. Most handheld devices use smaller, slower processors that consume less power. Therefore, the operating system and applications must be designed not to tax the processor.

The last issue confronting program designers for handheld devices is I/O. A lack of physical space limits input methods to small keyboards, handwriting recognition, or small screen-based keyboards. The small display screens limit output options. Whereas a monitor for a home computer may measure up to 30 inches, the display for a handheld device is often no more than 3 inches square. Familiar tasks, such as reading e-mail and browsing web pages, must be condensed into smaller displays. One approach for displaying the content in web pages is web clipping, where only a small subset of a web page is delivered and displayed on the handheld device. Some handheld devices use wireless technology, such as BlueTooth or 802.11, allowing remote access to e-mail and web browsing. Cellular telephones with connectivity to the Internet fall into this category. However, for PDAs that do not provide wireless access, downloading data typically requires the user to first download the data to a PC or workstation and then download the data to the PDA. Some PDAs allow data to be directly copied from one device to another using an infrared link. Generally, the limitations in the functionality of PDAs are balanced by their convenience and portability. Their use continues to expand as network
connections become more available and other options, such as digital cameras and MP3 players, expand their utility.



Frequently Asked Questions

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Ans: Distributed Systems A distributed system is a collection of physically separate, possibly heterogeneous computer systems that are networked to provide the users with access to the various resources that the system maintains. Access to a shared resource increases computation speed, functionality, data availability, and reliability. Some operating systems generalize network access as a form of file access, with the details of networking contained in the network interface's device driver. view more..
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Ans: Protection and Security If a computer system has multiple users and allows the concurrent execution of multiple processes, then access to data must be regulated. For that purpose, mechanisms ensure that files, memory segments, CPU, and other resources can be operated on by only those processes that have gained proper authorization from the operating system. For example, memory-addressing hardware ensures that a process can execute only within its own address space. view more..
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Ans: Storage Management To make the computer system convenient for users, the operating system provides a uniform, logical view of information storage. The operating system abstracts from the physical properties of its storage devices to define a logical storage unit, the file. The operating system maps files onto physical media and accesses these files via the storage devices view more..
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Ans: Special-Purpose Systems The discussion thus far has focused on general-purpose computer systems that we are all familiar with. There are, however, different classes of computer systems whose functions are more limited and whose objective is to deal with limited computation domains. view more..
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Ans: Operating systems provide a number of services. At the lowest level, system calls allow a running program to make requests from the operating system directly. At a higher level, the command interpreter or shell provides a mechanism for a user to issue a request without writing a program. Commands may come from files during batch-mode execution or directly from a terminal when in an interactive or time-shared mode. System programs are provided to satisfy many common user requests. The types of requests vary according to level. view more..
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Ans: Summary A thread is a flow of control within a process. A multithreaded process contains several different flows of control within the same address space. The benefits of multithreading include increased responsiveness to the user, resource sharing within the process, economy, and the ability to take advantage of multiprocessor architectures. User-level threads are threads that are visible to the programmer and are unknown to the kernel. view more..
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Ans: Motivation A distributed system is a collection of loosely coupled processors interconnected by a communication network. From the point of view of a specific processor in a distributed system, the rest of the processors and their respective resources are remote, whereas its own resources are local. The processors in a distributed system may vary in size and function. They may include small microprocessors, workstations, minicomputers, and large general-purpose computer systems. view more..
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Ans: Summary Multimedia applications are in common use in modern computer systems. Multimedia files include video and audio files, which may be delivered to systems such as desktop computers, personal digital assistants, and cell phones. view more..
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Ans: Summary CPU scheduling is the task of selecting a waiting process from the ready queue and allocating the CPU to it. The CPU is allocated to the selected process by the dispatcher. First-come, first-served (FCFS) scheduling is the simplest scheduling algorithm, but it can cause short processes to wait for very long processes. Shortestjob-first (SJF) scheduling is provably optimal, providing the shortest average waiting time. Implementing SJF scheduling is difficult, however, because predicting the length of the next CPU burst is difficult. view more..
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Ans: Summary It is desirable to be able to execute a process whose logical address space is larger than the available physical address space. Virtual memory is a technique that enables us to map a large logical address space onto a smaller physical memory. Virtual memory allowr s us to run extremely large processes and to raise the degree of multiprogramming, increasing CPU utilization. Further, it frees application programmers from worrying about memory availability. In addition, with virtual memory, several processes can share system libraries and memory. view more..
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Ans: Summary Disk drives are the major secondary-storage I/O devices on most computers. Most secondary storage devices are either magnetic disks or magnetic tapes. Modern disk drives are structured as a large one-dimensional array of logical disk blocks which is usually 512 bytes. Disks may be attached to a computer system in one of two ways: (1) using the local I/O ports on the host computer or (2) using a network connection such as storage area networks. view more..
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Ans: Microsoft designed Windows XP to be an extensible, portable operating system —one able to take advantage of new techniques and hardware. Windows XP supports multiple operating environments and symmetric multiprocessing, including both 32-bit and 64-bit processors and NUMA computers. view more..
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Ans: Summary A deadlock state occurs when two or more processes are waiting indefinitely for an event that can be caused only by one of the waiting processes. There are three principal methods for dealing with deadlocks: • Use some protocol to prevent or avoid deadlocks, ensuring that the system, will never enter a deadlock state. • Allow the system to enter a deadlock state, detect it, and then recover. • Ignore the problem altogether and pretend that deadlocks never occur in the system. The third solution is the one used by most operating systems, including UNIX and Windows view more..
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Ans: Summary A process is a program in execution. As a process executes, it changes state. The state of a process is defined by that process's current activity. Each process may be in one of the following states: new, ready, running, waiting, or terminated. view more..
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Ans: Summary A file is an abstract data type defined and implemented by the operating system. It is a sequence of logical records. A logical record may be a byte, a line (of fixed or variable length), or a more complex data item. The operating system may specifically support various record types or may leave that support to the application program. view more..
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Ans: Summary Memory-management algorithms for multiprogrammed operating systems range from the simple single-user system approach to paged segmentation. The most important determinant of the method used in a particular system is the hardware provided. view more..




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