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Revati S Misra

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Krishnapriya Rajeev

Krishnapriya Rajeev

10-Apr-2023

The goal of I/O (Input/Output) software in operating systems is to manage the transfer of data between the computer and its input/output devices, such as keyboards, monitors, printers, and storage devices like hard drives. It provides a layer of abstraction between the application software and the hardware, allowing the software to interact with the devices without worrying about their specific details.

The other major goals of using I/O software in operating systems are as follows:

  1. The naming of file systems in operating systems is designed to hide the hardware names from users, ensuring uniformity.
  2. Errors are often generated and handled by the controller, with lower-level issues being resolved before they reach upper-level processes.
  3. Device independence is critical in I/O software, allowing a program to open all I/O devices without the need to rewrite input-taking programs for each device, reducing workload and storage space requirements.
  4. Data inputted into a system is not directly stored in memory, but instead divided into smaller groups and transferred to the buffer for analysis. Buffering plays a significant role in I/O software by storing and copying data, and to avoid constraints, some data is preloaded into the buffer.
  5. I/O software must handle both shareable and non-shareable devices, such as hard disks and printers, respectively.
  6. Caching involves storing frequently accessed data in a separate memory called Cache memory to increase the speed of accessing data. This is done by creating a copy of the initially available data, and accessing the Cached copy is more efficient than accessing the original data.
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