An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common services for computer programs.
Real-time computing (RTC) is the computer science term for hardware and software systems subject to a "real-time constraint", for example from event to system response. Real-time programs must guarantee response within specified time constraints, often referred to as "deadlines".
In computing, a process is the instance of a computer program that is being executed by one or many threads. There are many different process models, some of which are light weight, but almost all processes are rooted in an operating system (OS) process which comprises the program code, assigned system resources, physical and logical access permissions, and data structures to initiate, control and coordinate execution activity. Depending on the OS, a process may be made up of multiple threads of execution that execute instructions concurrently.
In the industrial design field of human–computer interaction, a user interface (UI) is the space where interactions between humans and machines occur. The goal of this interaction is to allow effective operation and control of the machine from the human end, while the machine simultaneously feeds back information that aids the operators' decision-making process. Examples of this broad concept of user interfaces include the interactive aspects of computer operating systems, hand tools, heavy machinery operator controls and process controls. The design considerations applicable when creating user interfaces are related to, or involve such disciplines as, ergonomics and psychology.
In UNIX computing, the system load is a measure of the amount of computational work that a computer system performs. The load average represents the average system load over a period of time. It conventionally appears in the form of three numbers which represent the system load during the last one-, five-, and fifteen-minute periods.
In computing, scheduling is the action of assigning resources to perform tasks. The resources may be processors, network links or expansion cards. The tasks may be threads, processes or data flows.
In user interface design, a modal window is a graphical control element subordinate to an application's main window.
ISO 9241 is a multi-part standard from the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) covering ergonomics of human-system interaction and related, human-centered design processes. It is managed by the ISO Technical Committee 159. It was originally titled Ergonomic requirements for office work with visual display terminals (VDTs). From 2006 onwards, the standards were retitled to the more generic Ergonomics of Human System Interaction.
GOMS is a specialized human information processor model for human-computer interaction observation that describes a user's cognitive structure on four components. In the book The Psychology of Human Computer Interaction. written in 1983 by Stuart K. Card, Thomas P. Moran and Allen Newell, the authors introduce: "a set of Goals, a set of Operators, a set of Methods for achieving the goals, and a set of Selections rules for choosing among competing methods for goals." GOMS is a widely used method by usability specialists for computer system designers because it produces quantitative and qualitative predictions of how people will use a proposed system.
In Windows NT operating systems, the System Idle Process contains one or more kernel threads which run when no other runnable thread can be scheduled on a CPU. In a multiprocessor system, there is one idle thread associated with each CPU core. For a system with hyperthreading enabled, there is an idle thread for each logical processor.
The spinning pinwheel is a type of throbber and a variation of the mouse pointer used in Apple's macOS to indicate that an application is busy.
In computer science, asynchronous I/O is a form of input/output processing that permits other processing to continue before the I/O operation has finished. A name used for asynchronous I/O in the Windows API is overlapped I/O.
In human–computer interaction, the keystroke-level model (KLM) predicts how long it will take an expert user to accomplish a routine task without errors using an interactive computer system. It was proposed by Stuart K. Card, Thomas P. Moran and Allen Newell in 1980 in the Communications of the ACM and published in their book The Psychology of Human-Computer Interaction in 1983, which is considered as a classic in the HCI field. The foundations were laid in 1974, when Card and Moran joined the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) and created a group named Applied Information-Processing Psychology Project (AIP) with Newell as a consultant aiming to create an applied psychology of human-computer interaction. The keystroke-level model is still relevant today, which is shown by the recent research about mobile phones and touchscreens.
In computing, preemption is the act of temporarily interrupting an executing task, with the intention of resuming it at a later time. This interrupt is done by an external scheduler with no assistance or cooperation from the task. This preemptive scheduler usually runs in the most privileged protection ring, meaning that interruption and then resumption are considered highly secure actions. Such changes to the currently executing task of a processor are known as context switching.
High availability (HA) is a characteristic of a system that aims to ensure an agreed level of operational performance, usually uptime, for a higher than normal period.
In computing, reactive programming is a declarative programming paradigm concerned with data streams and the propagation of change. With this paradigm, it is possible to express static or dynamic data streams with ease, and also communicate that an inferred dependency within the associated execution model exists, which facilitates the automatic propagation of the changed data flow.
In computing, a hang or freeze occurs when either a process or system ceases to respond to inputs. A typical example is when computer's graphical user interface no longer responds to the user typing on the keyboard or moving the mouse. The term covers a wide range of behaviors in both clients and servers, and is not limited to graphical user interface issues.
In computing, input/output is the communication between an information processing system, such as a computer, and the outside world, such as another computer system, peripherals, or a human operator. Inputs are the signals or data received by the system and outputs are the signals or data sent from it. The term can also be used as part of an action; to "perform I/O" is to perform an input or output operation.
DioneOS is a multitasking preemptive, real-time operating system (RTOS). The system is designed for microcontrollers, originally released on 2 February 2011 for the Texas Instruments TI MSP430x, and then on 29 March 2013 for the ARM Cortex-M3. Target microcontroller platforms have limited resources, i.e., system clock frequency of tens of MHz, and memory amounts of tens to a few hundred kilobytes (KB). The RTOS is adapted to such conditions by providing a compact and efficient image. The efficiency term here means minimizing further central processing unit (CPU) load caused by system use. According to this definition, the system is more effective when it consumes less CPU time to execute its internal parts, e.g., managing threads.
In computing, elasticity is defined as "the degree to which a system is able to adapt to workload changes by provisioning and de-provisioning resources in an autonomic manner, such that at each point in time the available resources match the current demand as closely as possible". Elasticity is a defining characteristic that differentiates cloud computing from previously proposed distributed computing paradigms, such as grid computing. The dynamic adaptation of capacity, e.g., by altering the use of computing resources, to meet a varying workload is called "elastic computing".
