Operating System Fundamentals

Lecture 5 : Memory Management

Outline
◼ Background
◼ Logical versus Physical Address Space
◼ Swapping
◼ Contiguous Allocation
◼ Paging
◼ Segmentation
◼ Segmentation with Paging
Background
◼ Program must be brought into memory to be executed.
◼ Input queue – collection of processes on the disk that
are waiting to be brought into memory.
◼ Motivation: Keep several processes in memory to
improve a system’s performance.
◼ Selection of different memory management methods:
❑ Application-dependent.
❑ Hardware-dependent.
◼ Memory – A large array of words or bytes, each with its
own address.
◼ Memory is always too small !
Binding of Instructions and Data to Memory
Address binding can happen at three different stages.
◼ Compile time: If memory location known a priori, must
recompile code if starting location changes.
❑ Rarely used (MSDOS system files).
◼ Load time: If memory location is not known at compile time,
compiler must generate relocatable addresses. Located by
loader. Fixed while a program runs.
❑ Used in old systems (MSDOS applications)
❑ Not used much any more.
◼ Execution time: Binding delayed until run-time if the process
can be moved during its execution from one memory segment
to another.
❑ Currently dominates in multi-tasking systems (Windows

and UNIX).
Logical vs. Physical Address Space
◼ A logical (virtual) address space is the set of
logical addresses generated by a process.

◼ MMU maps from virtual to physical (actual)

addresses.

◼ Different memory mapping schemes need

different MMU’s.

◼ Logical and physical addresses are the same

in compile-time but differ in load-time and
execution-time address-binding scheme.
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.
Memory-Management Unit (MMU)
Dynamic Loading
◼ A routine will not be loaded until it is called.
◼ A relocatable loader must be called to load
the desired routine and to change/update the
program’s address tables.
◼ Better memory-space utilization; unused
routine is never loaded.
◼ Useful when large amounts of code are
needed to handle infrequently occurring
cases.
Dynamic Linking (1)
◼ With dynamic linking, frequently used
routines are not linked into the program.
Instead, just a small piece of code called a
stub is linked.
◼ When the routine is called, the stub checks to
see if the real routine is loaded (it may have
been loaded by another program).
❑ If not loaded, load it.
❑ If already loaded, share it. This needs some OS
help so that different jobs sharing the library don't
overwrite each other's private memory.
Dynamic Linking (2)
◼ Advantages of dynamic linking.
❑ Saves space: Routine only in memory once even
when used many times.
❑ Bug fix to dynamically linked library fixes all
applications that use that library, without having
to re-link the application.
◼ Disadvantages of dynamic linking.
❑ New bugs in dynamically linked library infect all
applications.
❑ Applications “change” even when they haven't
changed.
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.
 Contiguous Allocation (1)
◼ Main memory usually divided into two partitions:
❑ Resident operating system, 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 (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.
Contiguous Allocation (2)
◼ 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)
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.
◼ Reduce external fragmentation by compaction
❑ Compaction is to 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.
 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 (separate partition) and Windows (Swap file).
Schematic View of Swapping

Should a process be put back into the same

memory space that it occupied previously? Binding
Scheme (execution or load-time scheme) ?!
 Paging
◼ Problem: Logical address space of a process
can be noncontiguous (External Fragmentation).

◼ Objective : Users see a logically contiguous

address space although its physical addresses are
throughout physical memory.
Paging : Approach
◼ Divide physical memory into fixed-sized blocks
called frames (size is power of 2, between 512
bytes and 8192 bytes).
◼ 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.
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.
Address Translation Architecture
Paging Example
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 (PRLR) 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.
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,
❑ Local variables, global variables,
❑ common block,
❑ stack,
❑ symbol table, arrays.
Logical View of Segmentation
Segmentation Architecture
◼ Logical address consists of two tuples:
<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

◼ Allocation.
❑ First fit/best fit
❑ External fragmentation
◼ Relocation.
❑ Dynamic
❑ By segment table
Segmentation Example
Segmentation Example
Segmentation with Paging – MULTICS
◼ The 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.
MULTICS Address Translation Scheme