Exceptional Control Flow: Exceptions and Processes

Control Flow

Processors do only one thing: From startup to shutdown, a CPU simply reads and executes(interprets) a sequence of instructions, one at a time

To alter the control flow

  • Jumps and branches (jmp, CE)
  • Call and return (assemble code)

Not able to react to changes in system state:

  • Data arrives from a disk or a network adapter
  • Instruction divides by zero (or other wrong format)
  • User hit Crtl+C at the keyboard
  • System timer expires

Exceptional Control Flow

  • Exceptions: Change in control flow in response to a system event (Low level, implemented by hardware with OS software)
  • Process context switch (High level, implemented by OS software and hardware timer)
  • Signals (High level, implemented by OS software)
  • Nonlocal jumps (High level, implemented by C runtime library)

Exceptions

An exception is a transfer of control to the OS kernel in response to some event. (Divide by 0, arithmetic overflow, page fault, I/O request completes, typing Ctrl-C)

Asynchronous Exceptions (Interrupts)

  • Caused by events external to the processor
    • Indicate by setting the processor's interrupt pin
    • Handler returns to next instruction

Timer interrupt, I/O interrupt from external device

Synchronous Exceptions

Caused by events that occur as a result of executing an instruction:

  • Traps
    • Intentional
    • e.g. system calls, breakpoint traps, special instructions
    • Returns control to next instruction
  • Faults
    • Unintentional by possible recoverable
    • e.g. page faults(recoverable), protection faults(unrecoverable), floating point exceptions
    • Either re-executes faulting ("current") instruction or aborts
  • Abort
    • Unintentional and unrecoverable
    • e.g. illegal instruction, parity error, machine check
    • Aborts current program

System Calls

Each x86-64 system call has a unique ID number (for identification)

Processes

A process is an instance of a running program.

  • Each process is a logical control flow
  • Two processes run concurrently if their flows overlap in time
  • Otherwise, they are sequential (Single Core)

Syscall Error Handling

On error, Linux system-level functions typically return -1 and set global variable errno to indicate cause.

if ((pid = fork()) < 0) {
    fprintf(stderr, "fork error: %s\n", strerror(errno));
    exit(0);
}