Guardian Programmer's Guide

Table Of Contents
Creating and Managing Processes
Guardian Programmer’s Guide 421922-014
16 - 15
Process Subtype
16 Creating and Managing Processes
Process Subtype
The Guardian process subtype is an attribute that can be set at compile/bind time. A
terminal-simulation program, for example, needs to be assigned process subtype 30 to
allow it to assign itself a terminal-device type. See Section 24, Writing a Terminal
Simulator, for an example.
All HP compilers that are not native and the HP linkers let you set the process subtype.
The default process subtype is zero. Other process subtypes are either available for
your use or reserved as follows:
Subdevice types 48 through 63 are available for your use.
Subdevice types 1 through 47 are reserved. Extra protection is applied for
subdevice types 1 through 15. To assign a subdevice type in this range, you must
be the super ID user, be licensed, or have a PROGID that gives you super ID user
status. Any other access yields an illegal process subtype error.
Process Priority
All processes on a CPU share the same priority structure, including system processes
and application processes. It is therefore important that each process runs with a
priority that permits necessary system operations when needed.
For example, if an application process initiates a nowait I/O operation against a disk
file, it is important that the disk process runs with a higher priority than the application.
Otherwise, the disk process would not take control of the CPU until the application
process issues the AWAITIO procedure to wait for the completion of the I/O operation.
Table 16-1 provides an overview of suggested priority values for system and user
processes. System process priorities are set during system generation as described in
the System Generation Manual for D-series releases and in the System Generation
Manual for G-Series Releases for G-series releases; I/O processes (but not disk
processes) can also have their priorities dynamically changed using the Dynamic
System Configuration (DSC) utility as described in the Dynamic System Configuration
(DSC) Manual for D-series release systems; for G-series release systems, see the
Subsystem Control Facility (SCF) and the SCF reference manuals. Application
process priorities are set during process creation; see Creating Processes later in this
section.
CPU-bound processes may have their priority reduced automatically to allow other
processes to gain access to the IPU.