Subject Name: Operating System

Subject Code: CS-5002

Semester: 5th
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UNIT-IV

Operating System - Memory Management

Memory management is the functionality of an operating system which handles or manages

primary memory and moves processes back and forth between main memory and disk during
execution. Memory management keeps track of each and every memory location, regardless of
either it is allocated to some process or it is free. It checks how much memory is to be allocated
to processes. It decides which process will get memory at what time. It tracks whenever some
memory gets freed or unallocated and correspondingly it updates the status.

Process Address Space

The process address space is the set of logical addresses that a process references in its code.
For example, when 32-bit addressing is in use, addresses can range from 0 to 0x7fffffff; that is,
2^31 possible numbers, for a total theoretical size of 2 gigabytes.

The operating system takes care of mapping the logical addresses to physical addresses at the
time of memory allocation to the program. There are three types of addresses used in a
p og a efo e a d afte e o is allo ated −

S.N. Memory Addresses & Description

1 Symbolic addresses - The addresses used in a source code. The variable names,
constants, and instruction labels are the basic elements of the symbolic address
space.

2 Relative addresses - At the time of compilation, a compiler converts symbolic

addresses into relative addresses.

3 Physical addresses - The loader generates these addresses at the time when a
program is loaded into main memory.

Virtual and physical addresses are the same in compile-time and load-time address-binding
schemes. Virtual and physical addresses differ in execution-time address-binding scheme.

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The set of all logical addresses generated by a program is referred to as a logical address space.
The set of all physical addresses corresponding to these logical addresses is referred to as a
physical address space.

The runtime mapping from virtual to physical address is done by the memory management unit
(MMU) which is a hardware device. MMU uses following mechanism to convert virtual address
to physical address.

 The value in the base register is added to every address generated by a user process, which
is treated as offset at the time it is sent to memory. For example, if the base register value is
10000, then an attempt by the user to use address location 100 will be dynamically

 The user program deals with virtual addresses; it never sees the real physical addresses.
reallocated to location 10100.

Static vs Dynamic Loading

The choice between Static or Dynamic Loading is to be made at the time of computer program
being developed. If you have to load your program statically, then at the time of compilation,
the complete programs will be compiled and linked without leaving any external program or
module dependency. The linker combines the object program with other necessary object
modules into an absolute program, which also includes logical addresses.

If you are writing a dynamically loaded program, then your compiler will compile the program
and for all the modules which you want to include dynamically, only references will be provided
and rest of the work will be done at the time of execution.

At the time of loading, with static loading, the absolute program (and data) is loaded into
memory in order for execution to start.

If you are using dynamic loading, dynamic routines of the library are stored on a disk in
relocatable form and are loaded into memory only when they are needed by the program.

Static vs Dynamic Linking

As explained above, when static linking is used, the linker combines all other modules needed
by a program into a single executable program to avoid any runtime dependency.

When dynamic linking is used, it is not required to link the actual module or library with the
program, rather a reference to the dynamic module is provided at the time of compilation and
linking. Dynamic Link Libraries (DLL) in Windows and Shared Objects in UNIX are good examples
of dynamic libraries.

Swapping

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Swapping is mechanisms in which a process can be swapped temporarily out of main memory
(or move) to secondary storage (disk) and make that memory available to other processes. At
some later time, the system swaps back the process from the secondary storage to main
memory.

Though performance is usually affected by swapping process but it helps in running multiple
and big processes in parallel and that's the reason. Swapping is also known as a technique for
memory compaction.

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The total time taken by swapping process includes the time it takes to move the entire process
to a secondary disk and then to copy the process back to memory, as well as the time the
process takes to regain main memory.

Let us assume that the user process is of size 2048KB and on a standard hard disk where
swapping will take place has a data transfer rate around 1 MB per second. The actual transfer
of the 1000K process to or from memory will take

2048KB / 1024KB per second

= 2 seconds

= 2000 milliseconds

Now considering in and out time, it will take complete 4000 milliseconds plus other overhead
where the process competes to regain main memory.

Memory Allocation

Mai e o usuall has t o pa titio s −

 Low Memory− Ope ati g s ste esides i this e o .

 High Memory− Use p o esses a e held i high e o .
Operating system uses the following memory allocation mechanism.

S.N. Memory Allocation & Description

1 Single-partition allocation - In this type of allocation, relocation-register scheme is

used to protect user processes from each other, and from changing operating-
system code and data. Relocation register contains value of smallest physical
address whereas limit register contains range of logical addresses. Each logical
address must be less than the limit register.

2 Multiple-partition allocation - In this type of allocation, main memory is divided

into a number of fixed-sized partitions where each partition should contain only
one process. When a partition is free, a process is selected from the input queue
and is loaded into the free partition. When the process terminates, the partition
becomes available for another process.

Fragmentation

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As processes are loaded and removed from memory, the free memory space is broken into
little pieces. It happens after sometimes that processes cannot be allocated to memory blocks
considering their small size and memory blocks remains unused. This problem is known as
Fragmentation.

F ag e tatio is of t o t pes −

S.N. Fragmentation & Description

1 External fragmentation - Total memory space is enough to satisfy a request or to

reside a process in it, but it is not contiguous, so it cannot be used.

2 Internal fragmentation - Memory block assigned to process is bigger. Some portion

of memory is left unused, as it cannot be used by another process.

The following diagram shows how fragmentation can cause waste of memory and a compaction
te h i ue a e used to eate o e f ee e o out of f ag e ted e o −

External fragmentation can be reduced by compaction or shuffle memory contents to place all
free memory together in one large block. To make compaction feasible, relocation should be
dynamic.

The internal fragmentation can be reduced by effectively assigning the smallest partition but
large enough for the process.

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Paging

A computer can address more memory than the amount physically installed on the system. This
extra memory is actually called virtual memory and it is a section of a hard that's set up to
emulate the computer's RAM. Paging technique plays an important role in implementing virtual
memory.

Paging is a memory management technique in which process address space is broken into
blocks of the same size called pages (size is power of 2, between 512 bytes and 8192 bytes).
The size of the process is measured in the number of pages.

Similarly, main memory is divided into small fixed-sized blocks of (physical) memory called
frames and the size of a frame is kept the same as that of a page to have optimum utilization of
the main memory and to avoid external fragmentation.

Address Translation

Page address is called logical address and represented by page number and the offset.

Logical Address = Page number + page offset

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Frame address is called physical address and represented by a frame number and the offset.

Physical Address = Frame number + page offset

A data structure called page map table is used to keep track of the relation between a page of a
process to a frame in physical memory.

When the system allocates a frame to any page, it translates this logical address into a physical
address and creates entry into the page table to be used throughout execution of the program.

When a process is to be executed, its corresponding pages are loaded into any available
memory frames. Suppose you have a program of 8Kb but your memory can accommodate only
5Kb at a given point in time, then the paging concept will come into picture. When a computer
runs out of RAM, the operating system (OS) will move idle or unwanted pages of memory to
secondary memory to free up RAM for other processes and brings them back when needed by
the program.

This process continues during the whole execution of the program where the OS keeps
removing idle pages from the main memory and write them onto the secondary memory and
bring them back when required by the program.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Paging

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 Paging reduces external fragmentation, but still suffers from internal fragmentation.
 Paging is simple to implement and assumed as an efficient memory management technique.
 Due to equal size of the pages and frames, swapping becomes very easy.
 Page table requires extra memory space, so may not be good for a system having small RAM.
Segmentation

Segmentation is a memory management technique in which each job is divided into several
segments of different sizes, one for each module that contains pieces that perform related
functions. Each segment is actually a different logical address space of the program.

When a process is to be executed, its corresponding segmentation is loaded into non-

contiguous memory though every segment is loaded into a contiguous block of available
memory.

Segmentation memory management works very similar to paging but here segments are of
variable-length where as in paging pages are of fixed size.

A program segment contains the program's main function, utility functions, data structures, and
so on. The operating system maintains a segment map table for every process and a list of free
memory blocks along with segment numbers, their size and corresponding memory locations in
main memory. For each segment, the table stores the starting address of the segment and the
length of the segment. A reference to a memory location includes a value that identifies a
segment and an offset.

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Operating System - Virtual Memory

A computer can address more memory than the amount physically installed on the system. This
extra memory is actually called virtual memory and it is a section of a hard disk that's set up to
emulate the computer's RAM.

The main visible advantage of this scheme is that programs can be larger than physical memory.
Virtual memory serves two purposes. First, it allows us to extend the use of physical memory by
using disk. Second, it allows us to have memory protection, because each virtual address is
translated to a physical address.

Following are the situations, when entire program is not required to be loaded fully in main
memory.

 User written error handling routines are used only when an error occurred in the data or

 Certain options and features of a program may be used rarely.

computation.

 Many tables are assigned a fixed amount of address space even though only a small amount

 The ability to execute a program that is only partially in memory would counter many
of the table is actually used.

benefits.

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 Less number of I/O would be needed to load or swap each user program into memory.
 A program would no longer be constrained by the amount of physical memory that is

 Each user program could take less physical memory; more programs could be run the same
available.

time, with a corresponding increase in CPU utilization and throughput.

Modern microprocessors intended for general-purpose use, a memory management unit, or
MMU, is built into the hardware. The MMU's job is to translate virtual addresses into physical
add esses. A asi e a ple is gi e elo −

Virtual memory is commonly implemented by demand paging. It can also be implemented in a

segmentation system. Demand segmentation can also be used to provide virtual memory.

Demand Paging

A demand paging system is quite similar to a paging system with swapping where processes
reside in secondary memory and pages are loaded only on demand, not in advance. When a
context switch occurs, the operating system does not copy any of the old p og a ’s pages out

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to the disk o a of the e p og a ’s pages i to the ai e o I stead, it just egi s

e e uti g the e p og a afte loadi g the fi st page a d fet hes that p og a ’s pages as
they are referenced.

While executing a program, if the program references a page which is not available in the main
memory because it was swapped out a little ago, the processor treats this invalid memory
reference as a page fault and transfers control from the program to the operating system to
demand the page back into the memory.

Advantages

 Large virtual memory.

 More efficient use of memory.
 There is no limit on degree of multiprogramming.
Disadvantages

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 Number of tables and the amount of processor overhead for handling page interrupts are
greater than in the case of the simple paged management techniques.
Page Replacement Algorithm

Page replacement algorithms are the techniques using which an Operating System decides
which memory pages to swap out, write to disk when a page of memory needs to be allocated.
Paging happens whenever a page fault occurs and a free page cannot be used for allocation
purpose accounting to reason that pages are not available or the number of free pages is lower
than required pages.

When the page that was selected for replacement and was paged out, is referenced again, it
has to read in from disk, and this requires for I/O completion. This process determines the
quality of the page replacement algorithm: the lesser the time waiting for page-ins, the better is
the algorithm.

A page replacement algorithm looks at the limited information about accessing the pages
provided by hardware, and tries to select which pages should be replaced to minimize the total
number of page misses, while balancing it with the costs of primary storage and processor time
of the algorithm itself. There are many different page replacement algorithms. We evaluate an
algorithm by running it on a particular string of memory reference and computing the number
of page faults,

Reference String

The string of memory references is called reference string. Reference strings are generated
artificially or by tracing a given system and recording the address of each memory reference.
The latter choice produces a large number of data, where we note two things.

 For a given page size, we need to consider only the page number, not the entire address.
 If we have a reference to a page p, then any immediately following references to page p will
never cause a page fault. Page p will be in memory after the first reference; the immediately

 Fo e a ple, o side the follo i g se ue e of add esses −

following references will not fault.
, , , , ,9
 If page size is 100, then the reference string is 1,2,6,12,0,0
First in First out (FIFO) algorithm

 Oldest page in main memory is the one which will be selected for replacement.
 Easy to implement, keep a list, replace pages from the tail and add new pages at the head.

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Optimal Page algorithm

 An optimal page-replacement algorithm has the lowest page-fault rate of all algorithms. An

 Replace the page that will not be used for the longest period of time. Use the time when a
optimal page-replacement algorithm exists, and has been called OPT or MIN.

page is to be used.

Least Recently Used (LRU) algorithm

 Page which has not been used for the longest time in main memory is the one which will be

 Easy to implement, keep a list, replace pages by looking back into time.
selected for replacement.

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Page buffering algorithm

 To get a process start quickly, keep a pool of free frames.

 On page fault, select a page to be replaced.
 Write the new page in the frame of free pool, mark the page table and restart the process.
 Now write the dirty page out of disk and place the frame holding replaced page in free pool.
Least frequently Used (LFU) algorithm

 The page with the smallest count is the one which will be selected for replacement.
 This algorithm suffers from the situation in which a page is used heavily during the initial
phase of a process, but then is never used again.
Most frequently Used (MFU) algorithm

 This algorithm is based on the argument that the page with the smallest count was probably
just brought in and has yet to be used.

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CS-5002

Operating System

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