Chapter 9: Virtual Memory

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition,! Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009!
 Chapter 9: Virtual Memory
■ Background"
■ Demand Paging"
■ Page Replacement "
■ Thrashing"

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition! 9.2! Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009!
 Objectives
■ To describe the benefits of a virtual memory system
"
■ To explain the concepts of demand paging, page-replacement algorithms,
and allocation of page frames
"
■ To discuss the thrashing problem."

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition! 9.3! Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009!
 Virtual Memory
■ Virtual memory is a technique that allows the execution of processes that are
not completely in memory. "
● One major advantage of this scheme is that programs can be larger than
physical memory. "
● Further, virtual memory abstracts main memory into an extremely large,
uniform array of storage, separating logical memory as viewed by the user
from physical memory. "

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition! 9.4! Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009!
 Background
■ Virtual memory involves the separation of user logical memory from
physical memory."
● Only part of the program needs to be in memory for execution"
● Logical address space can therefore be much larger than physical
address space"
● Allows address spaces to be shared by several processes"
● Allows for more efficient process creation
"
■ Virtual memory can be implemented via:"
● Demand paging "
● Demand segmentation"

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition! 9.5! Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009!
 Virtual Memory That is Larger Than Physical Memory

⇒"

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition! 9.6! Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009!
 Virtual-address Space

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition! 9.7! Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009!
 Shared Library Using Virtual Memory

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition! 9.8! Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009!
 Demand Paging
■ Bring a page into memory only when it is needed"
● Less I/O needed"
● Less memory needed "
● Faster response"
● More users
"
■ Page is needed ⇒ reference to it"
● invalid reference ⇒ abort"
● not-in-memory ⇒ bring to memory"
■ Lazy swapper – never swaps a page into memory unless page will be
needed"
● Swapper that deals with pages is a pager!
"

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition! 9.9! Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009!
 Transfer of a Paged Memory to Contiguous Disk Space

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition! 9.10! Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009!
 Valid-Invalid Bit
■ With each page table entry a valid–invalid bit is associated
(v ⇒ in-memory, i ⇒ not-in-memory)"
■ Initially valid–invalid bit is set to i on all entries"
■ Example of a page table snapshot:

Frame #" valid-invalid bit"

v!
v!
v!
v!
i!
…."

i!
i!
page table"
"
■ During address translation, if valid–invalid bit in page table entry"
is I ⇒ page fault"
Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition! 9.11! Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009!
 Page Table When Some Pages Are Not in Main Memory

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition! 9.12! Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009!
 Page Fault

■ If there is a reference to a page, first reference to that page will

trap to operating system:"
page fault!
1. Operating system looks at another table to decide:"
● Invalid reference ⇒ abort"
● Just not in memory"
2. Get empty frame"
3. Swap page into frame"
4. Reset tables"
5. Set validation bit = v"
6. Restart the instruction that caused the page fault"

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition! 9.13! Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009!
 Steps in Handling a Page Fault

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition! 9.14! Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009!
 Virtual to Physical Address Translation (Mapping)
Algorithm In The Paging Scheme

■ The machine uses TLB (translation look-aside buffer) in the

cache and PT (page tables) in the main memory. "
"
■ Given the page size (= frame size), the virtual addresses
"
generated by the CPU which consists of: Page #, offset (p,d)
and the access type(AT): Read-only(R), Read-Write(RW), or
Execute-only (E), use the following algorithm:"
"

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition! 9.15! Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009!

IF p >= PTLR THEN trap ("Invalid page number")"
//* page# >= # of pages for this process *//"
IF p in TLB THEN "
"IF NOT AT in protection THEN trap ("memory-protection violation")"
"ELSE"
" ""Cache Hit""
" "Physical add. = frame# * page(frame) size + d"
"ENDIF"
ELSE"
IF in PT presence/absence bit (valid/invalid bit) = present (valid) THEN"
"// * this page is currently loaded in a frame of the main memory *//"
"IF NOT AT in protection THEN trap ("memory-protection violation")"
"ELSE"
" ""Cache Miss""
" "Physical add. = frame# * page(frame) size + d"
"ENDIF"
ELSE"
// * this page is not in the main memory, it's in the disk. must be swapped in according to the paging
replacement algorithm *//"
Trap ("page fault") ENDIF"

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition! 9.16! Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009!
 Performance of Demand Paging
■ Demand paging can significantly affect the performance of a computer system. Let's
compute the effective access time for a demand-paged memory. "
● For most computer systems, the memory-access time (ma) ranges from 10 to 200
nanoseconds. "
● As long as we have no page faults, the effective access time is equal to the memory
access time. "
● If, however a page fault occurs, we must first read the relevant page from disk and
then access the desired word. "
■ Page Fault Rate 0 ≤ p ≤ 1.0"
● if p = 0 no page faults "
● if p = 1, every reference is a fault
"
■ Effective Access Time (EAT)"
EAT = (1 – p) x memory access+ p (page fault overhead"
" " " " + swap page out "
" " " " " + swap page in "
" " " " + restart overhead)"
Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition! " 9.17! Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009!
 Demand Paging Example
■ Memory access time = 200 nanoseconds"
"
■ Average page-fault service time = 8 milliseconds
"
■ EAT = (1 – p) x 200 + p (8 milliseconds) "
" = (1 – p ) x 200 + p x 8,000,000 (nanoseconds) "
= 200 + p x 7,999,800"
"
■ If one access out of 1,000 causes a page fault, then"
EAT = 8.2 microseconds= 8200 nanosecond "
This is a slowdown by a factor of 40!!"

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition! 9.18! Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009!
 What happens if there is no free frame?

■ Page replacement – find some page in memory, but not

really in use, swap it out"
● algorithm"
● performance – want an algorithm which will result in
minimum number of page faults"
■ Same page may be brought into memory several times"

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition! 9.19! Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009!
 Page Replacement

■ If we increase the degree of multiprogramming we are

over-allocating memory. "
■ Prevent over-allocation of memory by modifying page-
fault service routine to include page replacement
!

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition! 9.20! Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009!
 Page Replacement
■ Prevent over-allocation of memory by modifying page-fault service routine to
include page replacement
"
■ Use modify (dirty) bit to reduce overhead of page transfers – only modified
pages are written to disk
"
■ Page replacement completes separation between logical memory and physical
memory – large virtual memory can be provided on a smaller physical memory"

■ But if we use demand paging we must solve Two major problems:"

● Develop Frame-allocation algorithms, if we have multiple processes in
memory, we must decide how many frames to allocate to each process. "
● Develop Page-replacement algorithms, When page replacement is required,
we must select the frames that are to be replaced. "
"

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition! 9.21! Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009!
 Need For Page Replacement

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition! 9.22! Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009!
 Basic Page Replacement

1. Find the location of the desired page on disk

"
2. Find a free frame:
- If there is a free frame, use it
- If there is no free frame, use a page replacement
"algorithm to select a victim frame
"
3. Bring the desired page into the (newly) free frame;
update the page and frame tables
"
4. Restart the process"

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition! 9.23! Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009!
 Page Replacement

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition! 9.24! Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009!
 Page Replacement Algorithms

■ Want lowest page-fault rate"

"
■ Evaluate algorithm by running it on a particular string of
memory references (reference string) and computing the
number of page faults on that string"
"
■ In all our examples, the reference string is "
" "
1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 5, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5!

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition! 9.25! Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009!
 Graph of Page Faults Versus The Number of Frames

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition! 9.26! Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009!
 FIFO Page Replacement

■ The simplest page-replacement algorithm is a first-
in, first-out (FIFO) algorithm. "
■ A FIFO replacement algorithm associates with each
page the time when that page was brought into
memory (FIFO queue). "
■ When a page must be replaced, the oldest page is
chosen. "
■ The FIFO page-replacement algorithm is easy to
understand and program. However, its performance
is not always good. "
"
Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition! 9.27! Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009!
 FIFO Page Replacement

there are 15 faults altogether

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition! 9.28! Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009!
 First-In-First-Out (FIFO) Algorithm
■ Reference string: 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 5, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5"
■ 3 frames (3 pages can be in memory at a time per process)"
"
" 1" 1" 4" 5"

" 2" 2" 1" 3" 9 page faults"

" 3" 3" 2" 4"
■ 4 frames

1" 1" 5" 4"

2" 2" 1" 5" 10 page faults"
" 3" 3" 2"

4" 4" 3"

"
■ Belady’s Anomaly: more frames ⇒ more page faults"

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition! 9.29! Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009!
 FIFO Illustrating Belady’s Anomaly

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition! 9.30! Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009!
 Optimal Algorithm
■ An optimal page-replacement algorithm has the lowest page-fault rate of all
algorithms (called OPT or MIN). It is simply this: "
● Replace the page that will not be used for longest period of time!
■ 4 frames example : 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 5, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

1" 4"
2" 6 page faults"
3"

4" 5"
"
■ How do you know this?"
■ Used for measuring how well your algorithm performs"

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition! 9.31! Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009!
 Optimal Algorithm
■ An optimal page-replacement algorithm has the lowest page-fault rate of all
algorithms (called OPT or MIN). It is simply this: "
● Replace the page that will not be used for longest period of time!
■ 4 frames example : 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 5, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

1" 4"
2" 6 page faults"
3"

4" 5"
"
■ How do you know this?"
■ Used for measuring how well your algorithm performs"

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition! 9.32! Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009!
 Optimal Page Replacement

9 page faults

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition! 9.33! Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009!
 Optimal Page Replacement

9 page faults

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition! 9.34! Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009!
 Optimal Page Replacement

9 page faults

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition! 9.35! Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009!
 Least Recently Used (LRU) Algorithm
■ replace the page that has not been used for the longest period of time "
■ Reference string: 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 5, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
1" 1" 1" 1" 5!
2" 2" 2" 2" 2"
3" 5! 5" 4! 4"
4" 4" 3! 3" 3"
"
"
■ Counter implementation"
● Every page entry has a time-of-use field; every time page is
referenced, copy the CPU clock/counter into the time-of-use field"
● When a page needs to be replaced, look at the time-of-use field
values to determine which page should be replaced"
"

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition! 9.36! Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009!
 Least Recently Used (LRU) Algorithm
■ replace the page that has not been used for the longest period of time "
■ Reference string: 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 5, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
1" 1" 1" 1" 5!
2" 2" 2" 2" 2"
3" 5! 5" 4! 4"
4" 4" 3! 3" 3"
"
"
■ Counter implementation"
● Every page entry has a time-of-use field; every time page is
referenced, copy the CPU clock/counter into the time-of-use field"
● When a page needs to be replaced, look at the time-of-use field
values to determine which page should be replaced"
"

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition! 9.37! Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009!
 LRU Page Replacement

12 page faults

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition! 9.38! Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009!
 LRU Page Replacement

12 page faults

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition! 9.39! Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009!
 LRU Page Replacement

12 page faults

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition! 9.40! Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009!
 LRU Algorithm (Cont.)
■ Stack implementation – keep a stack of page numbers in a double link form:"
● When a page is referenced:"
! move it to the top"
! requires 6 pointers to be changed"
● No search for replacement"

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition! 9.41! Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009!
 Use Of A Stack to Record The Most Recent Page
References

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition! 9.42! Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009!
 Counting Algorithms

■ Keep a counter of the number of references that have been made to

each page
"
■ The least frequently used (LFU) Algorithm: replaces page with
smallest count
"
■ The most frequently used (MFU) Algorithm: based on the argument
that the page with the smallest count was probably just brought in and
has yet to be used"

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition! 9.43! Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009!
 Allocation of Frames
■ How do we allocate the fixed amount of free memory among the
various processes?"
■ Each process needs minimum number of pages"
■ Example: IBM 370 – 6 pages to handle storage location to storage
location MOVE instruction:"
● instruction is 6 bytes, might span 2 pages"
● 2 pages to handle from!
● 2 pages to handle to!
■ Two major allocation schemes"
● fixed allocation"
● priority allocation"

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition! 9.44! Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009!
 Fixed Allocation

■ The easiest way to split m frames among n processes is

to give everyone an equal share, m/n frames. This
scheme is called Equal allocation "
■ For example, if there are 100 frames and 5 processes,
give each process 20 frames."

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition! 9.45! Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009!
 Proportional allocation
we allocate available memory to each process according to its size.

si = size of process pi
S = ∑ si
m = total number of frames
s
ai = allocation for pi = i × m
S
m = 64
s1 = 10
s2 = 127
10
a1 = × 64 ≈ 5
137
127
a2 = × 64 ≈ 59
137

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition! 9.46! Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009!
 Priority Allocation

■ Use a proportional allocation scheme using priorities rather than

size
"
■ If process Pi generates a page fault,"
● select for replacement one of its frames"
● select for replacement a frame from a process with lower
priority number"

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition! 9.47! Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009!
 Global vs. Local Allocation

■ Global replacement – process selects a replacement frame from the set of

all frames; one process can take a frame from another"
■ Local replacement – each process selects from only its own set of allocated
frames"
■ With a local replacement strategy, the number of frames allocated to a
process does not change. "
■ With global replacement, a process may happen to select only frames
allocated to other processes, thus increasing the number of frames allocated
to it (assuming that other processes do not choose its frames for
replacement). "
■ Global replacement generally results in greater system throughput and is
therefore the more common method. "

"

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition! 9.48! Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009!
 Thrashing
■ If a process does not have “enough” frames, the page-fault rate is
very high. "
● If the process does not have the number of frames it needs to
support pages in active use, it will quickly page-fault. "
● At this point, it must replace some page. "
● However, since all its pages are in active use, it must replace a
page that will be needed again right away. "
● Consequently, it quickly faults again, and again, and again,
replacing pages that it must bring back in immediately.
"
■ Thrashing ≡ a process is busy swapping pages in and out, it is
spending more time paging than executing. "

"

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition! 9.49! Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009!
 Cause of thrashing

■ This leads to:"
● low CPU utilization"
● operating system thinks that it needs to increase the degree of
multiprogramming"
● another process added to the systemà causing more page faults.

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition! 9.50! Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009!
 Thrashing (Cont.)

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition! 9.51! Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009!
 Demand Paging and Thrashing

■ Why does demand paging work?

Locality model"
● A process is composed of several different localities. Process migrates from
one locality to another."
● A locality is a set of pages that are actively used together."
● Localities may overlap"
"
■ Why does thrashing occur?
Σ size of locality > total memory size"

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition! 9.52! Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009!
 Thrashing

■ Working-Set Model."
■ Page-Fault Frequency Scheme."

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition! 9.53! Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009!
 Working-Set Model
■ Δ ≡ working-set window ≡ a fixed number of page references
Example: 10,000 instruction"
■ WSSi (working set of Process Pi) =
total number of pages referenced in the most recent Δ (varies in
time)"
● if Δ too small will not encompass entire locality"
● if Δ too large will encompass several localities"
● if Δ = ∞ ⇒ will encompass entire program"
■ D = Σ WSSi ≡ total demand frames "
■ if D > m ⇒ Thrashing"
■ Policy if D > m, then suspend one of the processes"

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition! 9.54! Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009!
 Working-set model

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition! 9.55! Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009!
 Page-Fault Frequency Scheme

■ Establish “acceptable” page-fault rate"

● If actual rate too low, process loses frame"
● If actual rate too high, process gains frame"

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition! 9.56! Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009!
 Conclusion

■ Virtual memory is commonly implemented by demand

paging. "
■ Demand paging is used to reduce the number of frames
allocated to a process. "
■ We need both page-replacement and frame-allocation
algorithms. "

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition! 9.57! Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009!
 End of Chapter 9

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition,! Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009!