Describe the term Context Switch

Question

Describe the term Context Switch.

Answer 1

Switching the CPU to other process needs saving the state of the old process and loading the saved state for a few process. This task is termed as a context switches. Context-switch time is pure overhead, since the system does no useful work when switching. Speed of this varies from machine to machine, depending upon the memory speed and the number of registers that must be copied, existed of special instructions (like a single instruction to load or store each register).