-----Memory Management Techniques-----

Non-Contiguous Memory Allocation-

Non-contiguous memory allocation is a memory allocation technique.

 It allows to store parts of a single process in a non-contiguous fashion.
 Thus, different parts of the same process can be stored at different places in the main memory.
Here are two popular techniques used for non-contiguous memory allocation-

SEGMENTATION

In Operating Systems, Segmentation is a memory management technique in which, the memory is divided into the
variable size parts. Each part is known as segment which can be allocated to a process.
The details about each segment are stored in a table called as segment table. Segment table is stored in one (or many)
of the segments.
Segment table contains mainly two information about segment:
1. Base: It is the base address of the segment
2. Limit: It is the length of the segment.

Why Segmentation is required?

Till now, we were using Paging as our main memory management technique. Paging is more close to Operating system
rather than the User. It divides all the process into the form of pages regardless of the fact that a process can have
some relative parts of functions which needs to be loaded in the same page.

Operating system doesn't care about the User's view of the process. It may divide the same function into different pages
and those pages may or may not be loaded at the same time into the memory. It decreases the efficiency of the system.

It is better to have segmentation which divides the process into the segments. Each segment contain same type of
functions such as main function can be included in one segment and the library functions can be included in the other
segment,

Translation of Logical address into physical address by segment table

 CPU always generates a logical address.

 A physical address is needed to access the main memory.
CPU generates a logical address which contains two parts:
1. Segment Number
2. Offset
  Segment Number specifies the specific segment of the process from which CPU wants to read the data.
 Offset specifies the specific word in the segment that CPU wants to read.
The Segment number is mapped to the segment table. The limit of the respective segment is compared with the offset.
Case-01: Segment Offset >= Limit

 If segment offset is found to be greater than or equal to the limit, it throws an error as the address is invalid.

Case-02: Segment Offset < Limit

 If segment offset is found to be smaller than the limit, then request is treated as a valid request.
 The segment offset must always lie in the range [0, limit-1],
 Then, segment offset is added with the base address of the segment.
 The result obtained after addition is the address of the memory location storing the required word.

Advantages of Segmentation

1. No internal fragmentation
2. Average Segment Size is larger than the actual page size.
3. Less overhead
4. It is easier to relocate segments than entire address space.
5. The segment table is of lesser size as compare to the page table in paging.

Disadvantages

1. It can have external fragmentation.

2. it is difficult to allocate contiguous memory to variable sized partition.
3. Costly memory management algorithms.
Compare and Contrast between Paging VS Segmentation:

Sr No. Paging Segmentation

1 Non-Contiguous memory allocation Non-contiguous memory allocation

2 Paging divides program into fixed size pages. Segmentation divides program into variable size
segments.

3 OS is responsible Compiler is responsible.

4 Paging is faster than segmentation Segmentation is slower than paging
5 Paging is closer to Operating System Segmentation is closer to User
6 It suffers from internal fragmentation It suffers from external fragmentation
7 There is no external fragmentation There is no external fragmentation
8 Logical address is divided into page number and Logical address is divided into segment number and
page offset segment offset

9 Page table is used to maintain the page Segment Table maintains the segment information
information.

10 Page table entry has the frame number and some Segment table entry has the base address of the
flag bits to represent details about pages. segment and some protection bits for the segments.
 PAGING
Paging is a non-contiguous memory allocation technique. The logical address generated by the CPU is translated into
the physical address using the page table.

 Paging is a fixed size partitioning scheme.

 In paging, secondary memory and main memory are divided into equal fixed size partitions.
 The partitions of secondary memory are called as pages.
 The partitions of main memory are called as frames.

 Each process is divided into parts where size of each part is same as page size.
 The size of the last part may be less than the page size.
 The pages of process are stored in the frames of main memory depending upon their availability.

Page Table

 Page table is a data structure.

 It maps the page number referenced by the CPU to the frame number where that page is stored.

Characteristics of Page Table:

 Page table is stored in the main memory.

 Number of entries in a page table = Number of pages in which the process is divided.
 Page Table Base Register (PTBR) contains the base address of page table.
 Each process has its own independent page table.
Working-

 Page Table Base Register (PTBR) provides the base address of the page table.
 The base address of the page table is added with the page number referenced by the CPU.
 It gives the entry of the page table containing the frame number where the referenced page is stored.

Page Table Entry-

 A page table entry contains several information about the page.

 The information contained in the page table entry varies from operating system to operating system.
 The most important information in a page table entry is frame number.

In general, each entry of a page table contains the following information-

1. Frame Number-

 Frame number specifies the frame where the page is stored in the main memory.
 The number of bits in frame number depends on the number of frames in the main memory.

2. Present / Absent Bit-

 This bit is also sometimes called as valid / invalid bit.

 This bit specifies whether that page is present in the main memory or not.
 If the page is not present in the main memory, then this bit is set to 0 otherwise set to 1.
 NOTE

 If the required page is not present in the main memory, then it is called as Page Fault.
 A page fault requires page initialization.
 The required page has to be initialized (fetched) from the secondary memory and brought into the main
memory.

3. Protection Bit-

 This bit is also sometimes called as “Read / Write bit“.

 This bit is concerned with the page protection.
 It specifies the permission to perform read and write operation on the page.
 If only read operation is allowed to be performed and no writing is allowed, then this bit is set to 0.
 If both read and write operation are allowed to be performed, then this bit is set to 1.

4. Reference Bit-

 Reference bit specifies whether that page has been referenced in the last clock cycle or not.
 If the page has been referenced recently, then this bit is set to 1 otherwise set to 0.

NOTE

 Reference bit is useful for page replacement policy.

 A page that has not been referenced recently is considered a good candidate for page replacement in
LRU page replacement policy.

5. Caching Enabled / Disabled-

 This bit enables or disables the caching of page.

 Whenever freshness in the data is required, then caching is disabled using this bit.
 If caching of the page is disabled, then this bit is set to 1 otherwise set to 0.

6. Dirty Bit-

 This bit is also sometimes called as “Modified bit“.

 This bit specifies whether that page has been modified or not.
 If the page has been modified, then this bit is set to 1 otherwise set to 0.
NOTE

In case the page is modified,

 Before replacing the modified page with some other page, it has to be written back in the secondary memory
to avoid losing the data.
 Dirty bit helps to avoid unnecessary writes.
 This is because if the page is not modified, then it can be directly replaced by another page without any need
of writing it back to the disk.

Example-

Consider a process is divided into 4 pages P0, P1, P2 and P3.

 Depending upon the availability, these pages may be stored in the main memory frames in a non-contiguous
fashion as shown-

Translating Logical Address into Physical Address-

 CPU always generates a logical address.

 A physical address is needed to access the main memory.

Following steps are followed to translate logical address into physical address-

Step-01:

CPU generates a logical address consisting of two parts-

1. Page Number
2. Page Offset
Step-02:

For the page number generated by the CPU,

 Page Table provides the corresponding frame number (base address of the frame) where that page is stored
in the main memory.

Step-03:

 The frame number combined with the page offset forms the required physical address.

 Frame number specifies the specific frame where the required page is stored.
 Page Offset specifies the specific word that has to be read from that page.

Diagram-

The following diagram illustrates the above steps of translating logical address into physical address-
Advantages-
The advantages of paging are-

 It allows to store parts of a single process in a non-contiguous fashion.

 It solves the problem of external fragmentation.

Disadvantages-

The disadvantages of paging are-

 It suffers from internal fragmentation.

 There is an overhead of maintaining a page table for each process.
 The time taken to fetch the instruction increases since now two memory accesses are required.
 Page Replacement Algorithms

The page replacement algorithm decides which memory page is to be replaced. The process of replacement is
sometimes called swap out or write to disk. Page replacement is done when the requested page is not found in the main
memory (page fault).

There are two main aspects of virtual memory, Frame allocation and Page Replacement. It is very important to have
the optimal frame allocation and page replacement algorithm. Frame allocation is all about how many frames are to be
allocated to the process while the page replacement is all about determining the page number which needs to be
replaced in order to make space for the requested page.

What If the algorithm is not optimal?

1. if the number of frames which are allocated to a process is not sufficient or accurate then there can be a problem of
thrashing. Due to the lack of frames, most of the pages will be residing in the main memory and therefore more page
faults will occur.

However, if OS allocates more frames to the process then there can be internal fragmentation.

2. If the page replacement algorithm is not optimal then there will also be the problem of thrashing. If the number of
pages that are replaced by the requested pages will be referred in the near future then there will be more number of
swap-in and swap-out and therefore the OS has to perform more replacements then usual which causes performance
deficiency.

Therefore, the task of an optimal page replacement algorithm is to choose the page which can limit the thrashing.

Types of Page Replacement Algorithms

There are various page replacement algorithms. Each algorithm has a different method by which the pages can be
replaced.

1. Optimal Page Replacement algorithm → this algorithms replaces the page which will not be referred for so
long in future. Although it can not be practically implementable but it can be used as a benchmark. Other
algorithms are compared to this in terms of optimality.
 2. Least recent used (LRU) page replacement algorithm → this algorithm replaces the page which has not
been referred for a long time. This algorithm is just opposite to the optimal page replacement algorithm. In this,
we look at the past instead of staring at future.
3. FIFO → in this algorithm, a queue is maintained. The page which is assigned the frame first will be replaced
first. In other words, the page which resides at the rare end of the queue will be replaced on the every page
fault.

Q. Consider a main memory with five page frames and the following sequence of page references: 3, 8, 2, 3,
9, 1, 6, 3, 8, 9, 3, 6, 2, 1, 3. which one of the following is true with respect to page replacement policies First-
In-First-out (FIFO) and Least Recently Used (LRU)?

A. Both incur the same number of page faults

B. FIFO incurs 2 more page faults than LRU
C. LRU incurs 2 more page faults than FIFO
D. FIFO incurs 1 more page faults than LRU

Solution:

Number of frames = 5

FIFO
According to FIFO, the page which first comes in the memory will first goes out.

Number of Page Faults = 9

Number of hits = 6

LRU
According to LRU, the page which has not been requested for a long time will get replaced with the new
one.
Number of Page Faults = 9
Number of Hits = 6

The Number of page faults in both the cases is equal therefore the Answer is option (A).