Chapter 9: Main Memory

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Chapter 9: Memory Management
 Background
 Contiguous Memory Allocation
 Paging
 Structure of the Page Table
 Swapping
 Example: The Intel 32 and 64-bit Architectures
 Example: ARMv8 Architecture

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 Objectives

 To provide a detailed description of various ways of organizing memory

hardware
 To discuss various memory-management techniques,
 To provide a detailed description of the Intel Pentium, which supports
both pure segmentation and segmentation with paging

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 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 is done 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

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 Protection
 Need to ensure that a process can access only those addresses in
its address space.
 We can provide this protection by using a pair of base and limit
registers define the logical address space of a process

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 Hardware Address Protection
 CPU must check every memory access generated in user mode to
be sure it is between base and limit for that user

 the instructions to loading the base and limit registers are privileged

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 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?
 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

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 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)

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 Multistep Processing of a User Program

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 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

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 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

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 Memory-Management Unit (Cont.)
 Consider simple scheme. which is a generalization of the base-
register scheme.
 The base register now called relocation register
 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
• Execution-time binding occurs when reference is made to location
in memory
• Logical address bound to physical addresses

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 Memory-Management Unit (Cont.)
 Consider simple scheme. which is a generalization of the base-
register scheme.
 The base register now called relocation register
 The value in the relocation register is added to every address
generated by a user process at the time it is sent to memory

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 Dynamic Loading
 The entire program does need to be in memory to execute
 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

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 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

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 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

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 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

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 Hardware Support for Relocation and Limit Registers

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 Variable Partition
 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)

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 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

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 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

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 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

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 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

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 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

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 Paging Hardware

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 Paging Model of Logical and Physical Memory

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 Paging Example
 Logical address: n = 2 and m = 4. Using a page size of 4 bytes and
a physical memory of 32 bytes (8 pages)

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 Paging -- 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

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 Free Frames

Before allocation After allocation

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 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 translation look-aside buffers
(TLBs) (also called associative memory).

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 Translation Look-Aside Buffer
 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

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 Hardware
 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

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 Paging Hardware With TLB

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 Effective Access Time
 Hit ratio – percentage of times that a page number is found in the TLB
 An 80% hit ratio means that we find the desired page number in the
TLB 80% of the time.
 Suppose that 10 nanoseconds to access memory.
• If we find the desired page in TLB then a mapped-memory access
take 10 ns
• Otherwise we need two memory access so it is 20 ns
 Effective Access Time (EAT)
EAT = 0.80 x 10 + 0.20 x 20 = 12 nanoseconds
implying 20% slowdown in access time
 Consider amore realistic hit ratio of 99%,
EAT = 0.99 x 10 + 0.01 x 20 = 10.1ns
implying only 1% slowdown in access time.

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 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

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 Valid (v) or Invalid (i) Bit In A Page Table

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 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

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 Shared Pages Example

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 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

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 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

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 Schematic View of Swapping

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 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()

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 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

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 Swapping on Mobile Systems
 Not typically supported
• Flash memory based
 Small amount of space
 Limited number of write cycles
 Poor throughput between flash memory and CPU on mobile
platform
 Instead use other methods to free memory if low
• iOS asks apps to voluntarily relinquish allocated memory
 Read-only data thrown out and reloaded from flash if needed
 Failure to free can result in termination
• Android terminates apps if low free memory, but first writes
application state to flash for fast restart
• Both OSes support paging as discussed below

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 Swapping with Paging

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 End of Chapter 9

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018