Chapter 8: Main Memory

Chapter 8: Memory Management

 Background
 Swapping
 Contiguous Memory Allocation
 Segmentation
 Paging
 Structure of the Page Table
 Background

 Program must be brought (from disk) into memory and placed

within a process for it to be run
 Main memory and registers are only storage CPU can access
directly
 Memory unit only sees a stream of addresses + read requests, or
address + data and write requests
 Register access in one CPU clock (or less)
 Main memory can take many cycles, causing a stall
 Cache sits between main memory and CPU registers
 Protection of memory required to ensure correct operation
 Base and Limit Registers
 A pair of base and limit registers define the logical address
space
 CPU must check every memory access generated in user mode to
be sure it is between base and limit for that user
Hardware Address Protection
 Address Binding
 Programs on disk, ready to be brought into memory to execute form an
input queue
 Without support, must be loaded into address 0000
 Inconvenient to have first user process physical address always at 0000
 How can it not be?
 Further, addresses represented in different ways at different stages of a
program’s life
 Source code addresses usually symbolic
 Compiled code addresses bind to relocatable addresses
 i.e. “14 bytes from beginning of this module”
 Linker or loader will bind relocatable addresses to absolute
addresses
 i.e. 74014
 Each binding maps one address space to another
 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)
Multistep Processing of a User Program
 Logical vs. Physical Address Space

 The concept of a logical address space that is bound to a

separate physical address space is central to proper memory
management
 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
 Logical address space is the set of all logical addresses
generated by a program
 Physical address space is the set of all physical addresses
generated by a program
 Memory-Management Unit (MMU)
 Hardware device that at run time maps virtual to physical address
 Many methods possible, covered in the rest of this chapter
 To start, consider simple scheme where the value in the
relocation register is added to every address generated by a user
process at the time it is sent to memory
 Base register now called relocation register
 MS-DOS on Intel 80x86 used 4 relocation registers
 The user program deals with logical addresses; it never sees the
real physical addresses
 Execution-time binding occurs when reference is made to
location in memory
 Logical address bound to physical addresses
 Dynamic relocation using a relocation register

 Routine is not loaded until it is called

 Better memory-space utilization;
unused routine is never loaded
 All routines kept on disk in relocatable
load format
 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
 OS can help by providing
libraries to implement dynamic
loading
 Dynamic Linking
 Static linking – system libraries and program code combined by
the loader into the binary program image
 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 checks if routine is in processes’ memory
address
 If not in address space, add to address space
 Dynamic linking is particularly useful for libraries
 System also known as shared libraries
 Consider applicability to patching system libraries
 Versioning may be needed
 Swapping
 A process can be swapped temporarily out of memory to a
backing store, and then brought back into memory for continued
execution
 Total physical memory space of processes can exceed
physical memory
 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
 System maintains a ready queue of ready-to-run processes
which have memory images on disk
 Swapping (Cont.)
 Does the swapped out process need to swap back in to same
physical addresses?
 Depends on address binding method
 Plus consider pending I/O to / from process memory space
 Modified versions of swapping are found on many systems (i.e.,
UNIX, Linux, and Windows)
 Swapping normally disabled
 Started if more than threshold amount of memory allocated
 Disabled again once memory demand reduced below
threshold
Schematic View of Swapping
 Context Switch Time including Swapping

 If next processes to be put on CPU is not in memory, need to

swap out a process and swap in target process
 Context switch time can then be very high
 100MB process swapping to hard disk with transfer rate of
50MB/sec
 Swap out time of 2000 ms
 Plus swap in of same sized process
 Total context switch swapping component time of 4000ms
(4 seconds)
 Can reduce if reduce size of memory swapped – by knowing
how much memory really being used
 System calls to inform OS of memory use via
request_memory() and release_memory()
 Context Switch Time and Swapping (Cont.)

 Other constraints as well on swapping

 Pending I/O – can’t swap out as I/O would occur to wrong
process
 Or always transfer I/O to kernel space, then to I/O device
 Known as double buffering, adds overhead
 Standard swapping not used in modern operating systems
 But modified version common
 Swap only when free memory extremely low
 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
 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
Hardware Support for Relocation and Limit Registers
 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)
 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
 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
 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
 Latch job in memory while it is involved in I/O
 Do I/O only into OS buffers
 Now consider that backing store has same fragmentation
problems
 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
User’s View of a Program
Logical View of Segmentation

4
1

3 2
4

user space physical memory space

 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
 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
Segmentation Hardware
 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
 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

page number page offset

p d
m -n n

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

Paging Hardware
Paging Model of Logical and Physical Memory
 Paging Example

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

 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
 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
 Free Frames

Before allocation After allocation

 Implementation of Page Table
 Page table is kept in main memory
 Page-table base register (PTBR) points to the page table
 Page-table length register (PTLR) indicates size of the page
table
 In this scheme every data/instruction access requires two
memory accesses
 One for the page table and one for the data / instruction
 The two memory access problem can be solved by the use of
a special fast-lookup hardware cache called associative
memory or translation look-aside buffers (TLBs)
 Implementation of Page Table (Cont.)
 Some TLBs store address-space identifiers (ASIDs) in each
TLB entry – uniquely identifies each process to provide
address-space protection for that process
 Otherwise need to flush at every context switch
 TLBs typically small (64 to 1,024 entries)
 On a TLB miss, value is loaded into the TLB for faster access
next time
 Replacement policies must be considered
 Some entries can be wired down for permanent fast
access
 Associative Memory

 Associative memory – parallel search

P a ge # F ra m e #

 Address translation (p, d)

 If p is in associative register, get frame # out
 Otherwise get frame # from page table in memory
Paging Hardware With TLB
 Memory Protection
 Memory protection implemented by associating protection bit
with each frame to indicate if read-only or read-write access is
allowed
 Can also add more bits to indicate page execute-only, and
so on
 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
 Or use page-table length register (PTLR)
 Any violations result in a trap to the kernel
Valid (v) or Invalid (i) Bit In A Page Table
 Shared Pages
 Shared code
 One copy of read-only (reentrant) code shared among
processes (i.e., text editors, compilers, window systems)
 Similar to multiple threads sharing the same process space
 Also useful for interprocess communication if sharing of
read-write pages is allowed
 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
Shared Pages Example
 Structure of the Page Table
 Memory structures for paging can get huge using straight-
forward methods
 Consider a 32-bit logical address space as on modern
computers
 Page size of 4 KB (212)
 Page table would have 1 million entries (232 / 212)
 If each entry is 4 bytes -> 4 MB of physical address space /
memory for page table alone
 That amount of memory used to cost a lot
 Don’t want to allocate that contiguously in main memory
 Hierarchical Paging
 Hashed Page Tables
 Inverted Page Tables
 Hierarchical Page Tables
 Break up the logical address space into multiple page
tables
 A simple technique is a two-level page table
 We then page the page table
Two-Level Page-Table Scheme
 Two-Level Paging Example
 A logical address (on 32-bit machine with 1K page size) is divided into:
 a page number consisting of 22 bits
 a page offset consisting of 10 bits

 Since the page table is paged, the page number is further divided into:
 a 12-bit page number
 a 10-bit page offset
 Thus, a logical address is as follows:

 where p1 is an index into the outer page table, and p2 is the

displacement within the page of the inner page table
 Known as forward-mapped page table
Address-Translation Scheme
 64-bit Logical Address Space

 Even two-level paging scheme not sufficient

 If page size is 4 KB (212)
 Then page table has 252 entries
 If two level scheme, inner page tables could be 210 4-byte entries
 Address would look like

 Outer page table has 242 entries or 244 bytes

 One solution is to add a 2nd outer page table
 But in the following example the 2nd outer page table is still 234 bytes in
size
 And possibly 4 memory access to get to one physical memory
location
Three-level Paging Scheme
 Hashed Page Tables
 Common in address spaces > 32 bits
 The virtual page number is hashed into a page table
 This page table contains a chain of elements hashing to the same
location
 Each element contains (1) the virtual page number (2) the value of the
mapped page frame (3) a pointer to the next element
 Virtual page numbers are compared in this chain searching for a
match
 If a match is found, the corresponding physical frame is extracted
 Variation for 64-bit addresses is clustered page tables
 Similar to hashed but each entry refers to several pages (such as
16) rather than 1
 Especially useful for sparse address spaces (where memory
references are non-contiguous and scattered)
Hashed Page Table
 Inverted Page Table
 Rather than each process having a page table and keeping track
of all possible logical pages, track all physical pages
 One entry for each real page of memory
 Entry consists of the virtual address of the page stored in that
real memory location, with information about the process that
owns that page
 Decreases memory needed to store each page table, but
increases time needed to search the table when a page
reference occurs
 Use hash table to limit the search to one — or at most a few —
page-table entries
 TLB can accelerate access
 But how to implement shared memory?
 One mapping of a virtual address to the shared physical
address
Inverted Page Table Architecture
End of Chapter 8