Another aspect of the system-call interface relates to the choice between blocking I/O and nonblocking I/O. When an application issues a blocking system call, the execution of the application is suspended. The application is moved from the operating system’s run queue to a wait queue. After the system call completes, the application is moved back to the run queue, where it is eligible to resume execution. When it resumes execution, it will receive the values returned by the system call.
The physical actions performed by I/O devices are generally asynchronous—they take a varying or unpredictable amount of time. Nevertheless, most operating systems use blocking system calls for the application interface, because blocking application code is easier to understand than nonblocking application code
Some user-level processes need nonblocking I/O. One example is a user interface that receives keyboard and mouse input while processing and displaying data on the screen. Another example is a video application that reads frames from a file on disk while simultaneously decompressing and displaying the output on the display.
An alternative to a nonblocking system call is an asynchronous system call. An asynchronous call returns immediately, without waiting for the I/O to complete. The application continues to execute its code. The completion of the I/O at some future time is communicated to the application, either through the setting of some variable in the address space of the application or through the triggering of a signal or software interrupt or a call-back routine that is executed outside the linear control flow of the application.
The difference between nonblocking and asynchronous system calls is that a nonblocking read() returns immediately with whatever data are available—the full number of bytes requested, fewer, or none at all. An asynchronous read() call requests a transfer that will be performed in its entirety but will complete at some future time.
