Process Control Block

In data processing, a Process Control Block (PCB) is a structure of data of the core of a Operating system representing the state of a process given.

Various implementations exist according to the operating systems, but a PCB contains in general:

the ID of a process (PID);
values of the register S corresponding to the process (the current state of the process, according to whether he is elected, ready or blocked);
the Instruction counter of the process;
the DRIVEN of the process;
a list of files and sockets;
Of other information such as time CPU accumulated by the process, etc

At the time of a context switch, the process in progress is stopped and another process can use the CPU. The core must stop the execution of the process in progress, copy the values of the registers hardware in the PCB, and update the registers with the values of the new process.

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