The task management programs of an operating system manage the accomplishment of the computing tasks of end users.
They give each tasks a slice of a CPU’s time and interrupt the CPU operations to substitute other tasks.
Task management may involve a multitasking capability where several computing tasks can occur at the same time.
Multitasking may take the form of multiprogramming, where the CPU can process the tasks of several programs at the same time, or timesharing, where the computing tasks if several users can be processed at the same time.
The efficiency of multitasking operations depends on the processing power of a CPU and the virtual memory and multitasking of the operating system it uses.
Most microcomputer, midrange, and mainframe operating systems provide a multitasking capability. With multitasking, end users can do two or more operations (e.g., keyboarding and printing) or application (e.g. word processing and financial analysis) concurrently, that is at the same time.
Multitasking on microcomputers has also been made possible by the development of more powerful microprocessors and their ability to directly address much larger memory capacities.
This allows an operating system to subdivide primary storage into several large partitions, each of which can be used by a different application program.
In effect, a single computer can act as if it were several computer, or virtual machines , since each application program is running independently at the same time.
The number of programs that can be run concurrently depends on the amount of memory that is available and the amount of processing each job demands.
That’s because a microprocessor (or CPU) can become overloaded with too many jobs and provide unacceptably slow response times.
However of memory and processing capacities are adequate, multitasking allows end users to easily switch from application to another, share data files among applications, and process some applications in a background mode.
Typically, background tasks include large printing jobs, extensive mathematical computation or unattended telecommunications session.
Task Management Programs
