Chapter 9: Memory Management

• Background
• Swapping
• Contiguous Allocation
• Paging
• Segmentation
• Segmentation with Paging

Operating System Concepts

• In computer science, locality of reference, also
known as the principle of locality, is the
tendency of a processor to access the same
set of memory locations repetitively over a
short period of time.

Operating System Concepts

 Background

• Program must be brought into memory and

placed within a process for it to be run.

• Input queue – collection of processes on the

disk that are waiting to be brought into
memory to run the program.

• User programs go through several steps

before being run.

Operating System Concepts

• Memory manager is used to keep track of the status of memory
locations, whether it is free or allocated. It addresses primary
memory by providing abstractions so that software perceives a
large memory is allocated to it.
• Memory manager permits computers with a small amount of main
memory to execute programs larger than the size or amount of
available memory. It does this by moving information back and
forth between primary memory and secondary memory by using
the concept of swapping.
• The memory manager is responsible for protecting the memory
allocated to each process from being corrupted by another process.
If this is not ensured, then the system may exhibit unpredictable
behavior.
• Memory managers should enable sharing of memory space
between processes. Thus, two programs can reside at the same
memory location although at different times.

Operating System Concepts

Multistep Processing of a User Program

Operating System Concepts

 Binding of Instructions and Data to Memory

Address binding of instructions and data to memory addresses can

happen at three different stages.

• Compile time: If memory location known a

priori, absolute code can be generated; must
recompile code if starting location changes.
• Load time: Must generate relocatable code if
memory location is not known at compile
time.
• Execution time: Binding delayed until run
time if the process can be moved during its
execution from one memory segment to
another. Need hardware support for address
maps (e.g., base and limit registers).

Operating System Concepts

 Logical vs. Physical Address Space
• Logical address – generated by the CPU; also
referred to as virtual address.
• Physical address – address seen by the memory
unit.

• Logical and physical addresses are the same in

compile-time and load-time address-binding
schemes; logical (virtual) and physical addresses
differ in execution-time address-binding scheme.
Operating System Concepts
 Memory-Management Unit (MMU)
• Hardware device that maps virtual to physical
address.

• In MMU scheme, the value in the relocation

register is added to every address generated by a
user process at the time it is sent to memory.

• The user program deals with logical addresses; it

never sees the real physical addresses.
Operating System Concepts
Dynamic relocation using a relocation register

Operating System Concepts

 Dynamic Loading
• Routine is not loaded until it is called
• Better memory-space utilization; unused
routine is never loaded.
• Useful when large amounts of code are
needed to handle infrequently occurring
cases.
• No special support from the operating system
is required, implemented through program
design.

Operating System Concepts

 Dynamic Linking
• Linking postponed until execution time.
• Small piece of code, stub, used to locate the
appropriate memory-resident library routine.
• Stub replaces itself with the address of the
routine, and executes the routine.
• Operating system needed to check if routine is
in processes’ memory address.
• Dynamic linking is particularly useful for
libraries.
Operating System Concepts
 Overlays
• Keep in memory only those instructions and
data that are needed at any given time.

• Needed when process is larger than amount

of memory allocated to it.

• Implemented by user, no special support

needed from operating system, programming
design of overlay structure is complex

Operating System Concepts

Overlays for a Two-Pass Assembler

Operating System Concepts

 Swapping
• A process can be swapped temporarily out of memory to a backing
store, and then brought back into memory for continued execution.

• Backing store – fast disk large enough to accommodate copies of all

memory images for all users; must provide direct access to these
memory images.

• Roll out, roll in – swapping variant used for priority-based

scheduling algorithms; lower-priority process is swapped out so
higher-priority process can be loaded and executed.

• Major part of swap time is transfer time; total transfer time is

directly proportional to the amount of memory swapped.

• Modified versions of swapping are found on many systems, i.e.,

UNIX, Linux, and Windows.
Operating System Concepts
Schematic View of Swapping

Operating System Concepts

 Contiguous Allocation
• Main memory usually into two partitions:
– Resident operating system, usually held in low memory
with interrupt vector.
– User processes then held in high memory.

• Single-partition allocation
– Relocation-register scheme used to protect user processes
from each other, and from changing operating-system
code and data.
– Relocation register contains value of smallest physical
address; limit register contains range of logical addresses –
each logical address must be less than the limit register.

Operating System Concepts

Hardware Support for Relocation and Limit Registers

Operating System Concepts

Contiguous Allocation (Cont.)
• Multiple-partition allocation
– 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.
– Operating system maintains information about:
a) allocated partitions b) free partitions (hole)

OS OS OS OS

process 5 process 5 process 5 process 5

process 9 process 9

process 8 process 10

process 2 process 2 process 2 process 2

Operating System Concepts

 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

Operating System Concepts
 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.
• 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
• Latch job in memory while it is involved in I/O.
• Do I/O only into OS buffers.

Operating System Concepts

 Paging
• Logical address space of a process can be noncontiguous;
process is allocated physical memory whenever the latter is
available.
• Divide physical memory into fixed-sized blocks called frames
(size is power of 2, between 512 bytes and 16 MB).
• 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.
• Internal fragmentation.

Operating System Concepts

• RAM size = 256 MB
• How many bits required in the address field to
address each byte of the memory?
• FRAME size = 64 KB
• How many frames?
• How many bits required in the address field to
address each frame?
• How many bits required to address every byte within
the frame?
Operating System Concepts
 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.

Operating System Concepts

Address Translation Architecture

Operating System Concepts

 Concept of paging
• Every process have its own page table.

• Each page table contains the list of frames

allocated to the process.

• Page table is indexed by page no and each page

no. contains the corresponding frame no. of the
memory where that page is allocated.

Operating System Concepts

Paging Example

Operating System Concepts

Operating System Concepts
 Paging
Example

Operating System Concepts

 Free Frames

Before allocation After allocation

Operating System Concepts

 Memory Protection
• Memory protection implemented by
associating protection bit with each frame.

• Valid-invalid bit attached to each entry in the

page table:
– “valid” indicates that the associated page is in the
process’ logical address space, and is thus a legal
page.
– “invalid” indicates that the page is not in the
process’ logical address space.
Operating System Concepts
Valid (v) or Invalid (i) Bit In A Page
Table

Operating System Concepts

 Page Table Structure
• Hierarchical Paging

• Hashed Page Tables

• Inverted Page Tables

Operating System Concepts

 Shared Pages
• Shared code
– One copy of read-only (reentrant) code shared among
processes (i.e., text editors, compilers, window
systems).
– Shared code must appear in same location in the
logical address space of all processes.

• Private code and data

– Each process keeps a separate copy of the code and
data.
– The pages for the private code and data can appear
anywhere in the logical address space.

Operating System Concepts

Shared Pages Example

Operating System Concepts

 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
User’s View of a Program

Operating System Concepts

Logical View of Segmentation
1

4
1

3 2
4

user space physical memory space

Operating System Concepts

 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
Segmentation Hardware

Operating System Concepts

Segmentation Architecture (Cont.)
• Relocation.
– dynamic
– by segment table

• Sharing.
– shared segments
– same segment number

• Allocation.
– first fit/best fit
– external fragmentation

Operating System Concepts

Segmentation Architecture (Cont.)
• Protection. With each entry in segment table
associate:
– validation bit = 0  illegal segment
– 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

 Segmentation with Paging
• The MULTICS system solved problems of
external fragmentation and lengthy search
times by paging the segments.

• Solution differs from pure segmentation in

that the segment-table entry contains not the
base address of the segment, but rather the
base address of a page table for this segment.

Operating System Concepts

 MULTICS Address Translation Scheme

Operating System Concepts