Chapter 8: Main Memory

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Contiguous Allocation
● Main memory must support both OS and user processes
● Limited resource, must allocate efficiently
● Contiguous allocation is one early method
● Main memory usually into two partitions:
● Resident operating system, usually held in low memory with
interrupt vector
● User processes then held in high memory
● Each process contained in single contiguous section of
memory

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 8.2 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Contiguous Allocation (Cont.)
● Relocation registers used to protect user processes from each
other, and from changing operating-system code and data
● Base register contains value of smallest physical address
● Limit register contains range of logical addresses – each
logical address must be less than the limit register
● MMU maps logical address dynamically
● Can then allow actions such as kernel code being transient
and kernel changing size

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 8.3 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Hardware Support for Relocation and Limit Registers

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 8.4 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Multiple-partition allocation
● Multiple-partition allocation
● Degree of multiprogramming limited by number of partitions
● Variable-partition sizes for efficiency (sized to a given process’ needs)
● Hole – block of available memory; holes of various size are scattered
throughout memory
● When a process arrives, it is allocated memory from a hole large enough to
accommodate it
● Process exiting frees its partition, adjacent free partitions combined
● Operating system maintains information about:
a) allocated partitions b) free partitions (hole)

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 8.5 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Dynamic Storage-Allocation Problem
How to satisfy a request of size n from a list of free holes?

● First-fit: Allocate the first hole that is big enough

● Best-fit: Allocate the smallest hole that is big enough; must

search entire list, unless ordered by size
● Produces the smallest leftover hole

● Worst-fit: Allocate the largest hole; must also search entire list
● Produces the largest leftover hole

First-fit and best-fit better than worst-fit in terms of speed and storage
utilization

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 8.6 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Fragmentation
● External Fragmentation – total memory space exists to
satisfy a request, but it is not contiguous
● Internal Fragmentation – allocated memory may be slightly
larger than requested memory; this size difference is memory
internal to a partition, but not being used
● First fit analysis reveals that given N blocks allocated, 0.5 N
blocks lost to fragmentation
● 1/3 may be unusable -> 50-percent rule

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 8.7 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Fragmentation (Cont.)

● Reduce external fragmentation by compaction

● Shuffle memory contents to place all free memory together
in one large block
● Compaction is possible only if relocation is dynamic, and is
done at execution time
● I/O problem
4 Latch job in memory while it is involved in I/O
4 Do I/O only into OS buffers
● Now consider that backing store has same fragmentation
problems

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 8.8 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Segmentation
● Memory-management scheme that supports user view of memory
● A program is a collection of segments
● A segment is a logical unit such as:
main program
procedure
function
method
object
local variables, global variables
common block
stack
symbol table
arrays

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 8.9 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 User’s View of a Program

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 8.10 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Logical View of Segmentation

4
1

3 2
4

user space physical memory space

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 8.11 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Segmentation Architecture
● Logical address consists of a two tuple:
<segment-number, offset>,

● Segment table – maps two-dimensional physical addresses;

each table entry has:
● base – contains the starting physical address where the
segments reside in memory
● limit – specifies the length of the segment

● Segment-table base register (STBR) points to the segment

table’s location in memory

● Segment-table length register (STLR) indicates number of

segments used by a program;
segment number s is legal if s < STLR

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 8.12 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Segmentation Architecture (Cont.)
● Protection
● With each entry in segment table associate:
4 validation bit = 0 ⇒ illegal segment
4 read/write/execute privileges
● Protection bits associated with segments; code sharing
occurs at segment level
● Since segments vary in length, memory allocation is a
dynamic storage-allocation problem
● A segmentation example is shown in the following diagram

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 8.13 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Segmentation Hardware

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 8.14 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Paging
● Physical address space of a process can be noncontiguous;
process is allocated physical memory whenever the latter is
available
● Avoids external fragmentation
● Avoids problem of varying sized memory chunks
● Divide physical memory into fixed-sized blocks called frames
● Size is power of 2, between 512 bytes and 16 Mbytes
● Divide logical memory into blocks of same size called pages
● Keep track of all free frames
● To run a program of size N pages, need to find N free frames and
load program
● Set up a page table to translate logical to physical addresses
● Backing store likewise split into pages
● Still have Internal fragmentation

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 8.15 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Address Translation Scheme
● Address generated by CPU is divided into:
● Page number (p) – used as an index into a page table which
contains base address of each page in physical memory
● Page offset (d) – combined with base address to define the
physical memory address that is sent to the memory unit

● For given logical address space 2m and page size 2n

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 8.16 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Paging Hardware

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 8.17 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Paging Model of Logical and Physical Memory

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 8.18 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Paging Example

n=2 and m=4 32-byte memory and 4-byte pages

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 8.19 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Paging (Cont.)

● Calculating internal fragmentation

● Page size = 2,048 bytes
● Process size = 72,766 bytes
● 35 pages + 1,086 bytes
● Internal fragmentation of 2,048 - 1,086 = 962 bytes
● Worst case fragmentation = 1 frame – 1 byte
● On average fragmentation = 1 / 2 frame size
● So small frame sizes desirable?
● But each page table entry takes memory to track
● Page sizes growing over time
4 Solaris supports two page sizes – 8 KB and 4 MB
● Process view and physical memory now very different
● By implementation process can only access its own memory

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 8.20 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Free Frames

Before allocation After allocation

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 8.21 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013