Task 1. Receive basic information about your workstation

LABORATORY EXERCISE №1

Topic 1: Computation of metrics of productivity of computer system: speed, efficiency, energy expenses, Amdal's law, CPU time.

Basics:

An operating system is the program that, after being initially loaded into the computer by a boot program, manages all the other programs in a computer. The other programs are called applications or application programs. The application programs make use of the operating system by making requests for services through a defined application program interface (API). In addition, users can interact directly with the operating system through a user interface such as a command language or a graphical user interface (GUI). For hardware functions such as input and output and memory allocation, the operating system acts as an intermediary between programs and the computer hardware, although the application code is usually executed directly by the hardware and frequently makes system calls to an OS function or is interrupted by it.

Major operating system functions:

1. CPU management - division of tasks into manageable pieces and distributing them on the priorities before sending to the processing of the CPU;

2. Memory management - coordination of the data flow in and out of RAM and determining the need for virtual memory;

3. Device Management - providing communication between each device connected to a computer, CPU and requests;

4. Data management - a direction of data storage for a long time on hard drives and other storage devices extended;

5. Application Interface - providing a standard communication and data exchange between application programs and components;

6. User Interface - providing ways to communicate and interact with the computer.

Depending on the number of simultaneously processed tasks and the number of users, which can be catered, there are four common types of operating systems:

1. single-user single-tasking, which support a single input source and can be operated with only one (current) task at a time;

2. single-user multi-tasking, which provide to a single user parallel processing of multiple tasks;

3. multiple users multi-tasking, allowing to run multiple tasks to multiple users on a single computer.

4. real-time operating system, guarantees to process events or data by a specific moment in time. A real-time operating system may be single- or multi-tasking, but when multitasking, it uses specialized scheduling algorithms so that a deterministic nature of behavior is achieved.

32-bit or 64-bit OS?The answer commonly depends on which type of processor is used. Modern computing has been shifting towards 64-bit for a few years now, and it has saturated the market to a point where even entry-level computers are equipped with these new, more powerful processors.

A 32-bit operating system will run efficiently at 4 GB memory, but no more than that. This is because its architectural design won’t exceed a certain integer value, the addressable space. That integer value refers to your “bit” which is binary (0 or 1). Now if you have a 32-bit, you’ll have 2(0 and 1)³², which would then be equal to 4 billion bytes or 4GiB of addressable space.

With your 64-bit, the calculations would still be the same as with your 32-bit. So if you now have a 64-bit, you’ll have 2⁶⁴ that would total up to a large 16 Exbibyte (1.1529215 × 10⁹ gigabytes). It would now be your addressable space. However, since most of it won’t be fully utilized, OS’s will have its limits like a 64-bit Windows with a maximum 8 TB.

Comparison of the computers usually starts with an assessment of their performance. This necessitated the introduction of appropriate units of measurement performance and the development of standard methods for its assessment. The core of the currently used computer performance evaluation and comparison methods are based on time. The amount of time the CPU is actually executing instructions. During the execution of most programs, the CPU sits idle much of the time while the computer fetches data, or sends data to an output device. The CPU time of an executing program, therefore, is generally much less than the total execution time of the program. Multitasking operating systems take advantage of this by sharing the CPU among several programs.

Performance testing methodsare distinguished into the following areas:

1. Load testing. Usually it carried out in order to assess the behavior of the application under the given expected load. This load may be, for example, the expected number of simultaneous users application committing transactions over a predetermined number of time intervals.

2. Stress testing. Used to understand the limits of application bandwidth. This type of testing is conducted to determine the reliability of the system during extreme or disproportionate loads

3. Stability testing. uring soak tests, memory utilization is monitored to detect potential leaks. Also important, but often overlooked is performance degradation, i.e. to ensure that the throughput and/or response times after some long period of sustained activity are as good as or better than at the beginning of the test.

4. Configuration testing. In this case, instead of test performance in terms of the fed loads, tested the effect of changes in the configuration performance.

Key indicators (metrics) of system performance:

1. The CPU resources consumption (CPU,%)

The metric that shows how much time from a certain interval has been spent by given processor on the selected process calculations. In modern systems, the important factor is the process ability to operate in several streams to provide a possibility to perform calculations in parallel.

2. RAM Consumption (Memory usage, Mb)

The metric that shows the amount of memory used by the application. At the application operation memory is filled with references to the objects which, in the case of non-use, can be cleaned with a special automatic process called "garbage collector". The time spent by the processor to the memory cleaned in this way can be significant.

3. The consumption of the network resources

This metric is not directly related to application performance, but its indexes can indicate the limits in overall system performance.

4. Operation of disk subsystem (I / O Wait)

Working with the disk subsystem can significantly affect system performance, therefore, the collection of statistics on operation disk can help identify bottlenecks in this area. A large number of reads or records can lead to downtime of the processor in anticipation of data from the disk and eventually increase CPU consumption and an increase in response time.

5. Execution time (response time, ms)

Query execution time of the application remains one of the most important indicators of performance of the system or application. This time can be measured on the server side, as the time indicator which is required for the server-side processing of the request; and on the client, as a measure of the total time it takes to serialize / deserialize, shipment and processing the request.

Task 1. Receive basic information about your workstation

The simplest way:

1. Click Start and select Control Panel from the Start menu.

2. In the Control Panel window, click System and Security.

3. In the System and Security window, click System.

       Tips: To get information about installed OS quickly (for Windows)

1. Open prompt command line:

· Press  + R on your keyboard OR

· Click Start and type cmd (cmd.exe) in command line OR

· Open Task Manager with more details. Choose File and then Run New Task. Type cmd or cmd.exe, and hit OK to open up a regular command prompt OR

· Open the Start menu, and click/tap on All apps at the bottom. In All apps, scroll down and expand the Windows System folder, then click/tap on Command Prompt. (for Windows 10).

2. In prompt command line type: “winver” (without quotes)

4. Create Folder D:\”Group Name” ICTLABS\ (without quotes)

5. In your folder create Microsoft Word document “Student Name_Lab№1.docx”

6. Write down the following data into the table titled “Lab1_task1”:

NOTE: To fulfill 10 - 12 you have to access System Information window:

1. Open prompt command line

2. In prompt type: “msinfo32” (without quotes)

OR

1. Click "Start" on the Taskbar

2. Go to "All Programs"

3. Go to "Accessories".

4. Go to "System Tools".

5. Click "System Information".

NOTE: To fulfill 13 - in the System Information window:

1. Click and select the Drives category below Storage (wait for the system information to refresh on the right pane)

2. Click File and Save

3. Save Drivers information in txt file in your Lab. Folder (type path in table).