what is Context switch?

Answer Posted / ragheed

When CPU switches to another process, the system must save the state of the old process and load the saved state for the new process via a context switch.
Context of a process represented in the PCB
Context-switch time is overhead; the system does no useful work while switching The more complex the OS and the PCB -> longer the context switch

Time dependent on hardware support Some hardware provides multiple sets of registers per CPU -> multiple contexts loaded at once

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