Problem Statement
Describe what a context switch is and why minimizing context‐switch time is important.
Explanation
A context switch is the process of saving the state of the currently running process (such as register values, stack pointer, program counter) into its PCB and then loading the state of another process so it can run on the CPU. This lets the OS switch the CPU from one process to another. Minimising context switch time is important because each switch incurs overhead—saving and loading registers, updating memory maps, flushing translation lookaside buffers (TLB), and switching caches. High context‐switch overhead reduces CPU efficiency and can degrade overall system performance.
