Resource (computing)

Equipment or system resources (or simply resources) are elements of a computer system that are required for correct execution of processes, such as hard drive, memory or printer. Access to the resources is controlled by the operating system. These semaphores are used to avoid conflicts usually restrict access to their allocated resource. When interdependence of resources, a failure of access control leads to a so-called deadlock ( deadlock ).

Some resources, such as printers can only do one task at the same time, which requires the use of so-called print queues ( spooling ). In the resource CPU can in turn be ensured by the use of a scheduler, a fair distribution of the available CPU time to all running processes.

Classification options

Resources can be classified in different ways:

In programming, especially one delimits with "resource" files or parts of files that provides background information about the program.

• Operating system theory