Operating Systems:
Internals and Design Principles, 6/E
William Stallings
Chapter 7
Memory Management
Dave Bremer
Otago Polytechnic, N.Z.
©2009, Prentice Hall
Roadmap
• Basic requirements of Memory
Management
• Memory Partitioning
• Basic blocks of memory management
– Paging
– Segmentation
The need for memory
management
• Memory is cheap today, and getting
cheaper
– But applications are demanding more and
more memory, there is never enough!
• Memory Management, involves swapping
blocks of data from secondary storage.
• Memory I/O is slow compared to a CPU
– The OS must cleverly time the swapping to
maximise the CPU’s efficiency
Memory Management
Memory needs to be allocated to ensure a
reasonable supply of ready processes to
consume available processor time
Memory Management
Requirements
• Relocation
• Protection
• Sharing
• Logical organisation
• Physical organisation
Requirements: Relocation
• The programmer does not know where the
program will be placed in memory when it
is executed,
– it may be swapped to disk and return to main
memory at a different location (relocated)
• Memory references must be translated to
the actual physical memory address
Memory Management
Terms
Table 7.1 Memory Management Terms
Term Description
Frame Fixed-length block of main
memory.
Page Fixed-length block of data in
secondary memory (e.g. on disk).
Segment Variable-length block of data that
resides in secondary memory.
Addressing
Requirements: Protection
• Processes should not be able to reference
memory locations in another process
without permission
• Impossible to check absolute addresses at
compile time
• Must be checked at run time
Requirements: Sharing
• Allow several processes to access the
same portion of memory
• Better to allow each process access to the
same copy of the program rather than
have their own separate copy
Requirements: Logical
Organization
• Memory is organized linearly (usually)
• Programs are written in modules
– Modules can be written and compiled
independently
• Different degrees of protection given to
modules (read-only, execute-only)
• Share modules among processes
• Segmentation helps here
Requirements: Physical
Organization
• Cannot leave the programmer with the
responsibility to manage memory
• Memory available for a program plus its
data may be insufficient
– Overlaying allows various modules to be
assigned the same region of memory but is
time consuming to program
• Programmer does not know how much
space will be available
Partitioning
• An early method of managing memory
– Pre-virtual memory
– Not used much now
• But, it will clarify the later discussion of
virtual memory if we look first at
partitioning
– Virtual Memory has evolved from the
partitioning methods
Types of Partitioning
• Fixed Partitioning
• Dynamic Partitioning
• Simple Paging
• Simple Segmentation
• Virtual Memory Paging
• Virtual Memory Segmentation
Fixed Partitioning
• Equal-size partitions (see fig 7.3a)
– Any process whose size is less than
or equal to the partition size can be
loaded into an available partition
• The operating system can swap a
process out of a partition
– If none are in a ready or running
state
Fixed Partitioning Problems
• A program may not fit in a partition.
– The programmer must design the program
with overlays
• Main memory use is inefficient.
– Any program, no matter how small, occupies
an entire partition.
– This is results in internal fragmentation.
Solution – Unequal Size
Partitions
• Lessens both problems
– but doesn’t solve completely
• In Fig 7.3b,
– Programs up to 16M can be
accommodated without overlay
– Smaller programs can be placed in
smaller partitions, reducing internal
fragmentation
Placement Algorithm
• Equal-size
– Placement is trivial (no options)
• Unequal-size
– Can assign each process to the smallest
partition within which it will fit
– Queue for each partition
– Processes are assigned in such a way as to
minimize wasted memory within a partition
Fixed Partitioning
Remaining Problems with
Fixed Partitions
• The number of active processes is limited
by the system
– I.E limited by the pre-determined number of
partitions
• A large number of very small process will
not use the space efficiently
– In either fixed or variable length partition
methods
Dynamic Partitioning
• Partitions are of variable length and
number
• Process is allocated exactly as much
memory as required
Segmentation
• A program can be subdivided into
segments
– Segments may vary in length
– There is a maximum segment length
• Addressing consist of two parts
– a segment number and
– an offset
• Segmentation is similar to dynamic
partitioning
Logical Addresses
Paging
Segmentation
