| We have now covered the creation, execution, and deconstruction of a process/thread's existence on an HP-UX system. Hopefully, you are developing an appreciation and a basic understanding of the behind-the-scenes work done by the HP-UX kernel on behalf of an application program. As there are many constituent parts to a program's run environment, it is the allocation, cleanup, and balancing of these resources that occupies much of the kernel's time. Savvy programmers aware of these issues may make subtle changes in their approach to the use of system resources and improve performance. There are no magic bullets or secret formulas contained here, but knowledge can help you achieve effective utilization of your system's valuable resources. Next, we examine the way HP-UX interacts with device files ("special files") in the I/O subsystem. |