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What is Process? Give the difference between a process and a program.

Question

What is Process? Give the difference between a process and a program.

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Solution

A process is a program in execution. It is more than the program code as it includes the program counter, process stack, registers, program data, etc. It also includes the states of a process like start, ready, running, waiting, terminated, etc.

A process is an instance of a program that is being executed. It contains the program code and its current activity. Each process has a separate memory block and is handled independently by the operating system.

On the other hand, a program is a passive entity, such as the contents of a file stored on disk, whereas a process is an active entity, with a program counter specifying the next instruction to execute and a set of associated resources.

In summary, the main differences between a process and a program are:

  1. A program is a set of instructions that are to be executed by the computer. A process is a program in execution.

  2. A program is passive, just sitting on the hard drive, whereas a process is active, with instructions and data loaded into the CPU registers and memory.

  3. A single program can be used to create multiple processes, each with its own separate memory space and resources.

  4. A program does not perform any action, whereas a process does.

  5. A program becomes a process when it is loaded from a disk into memory.

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