OPERATING SYSTEMS

SGBIT College of Engineering

 Operating Systems BCS303
COURSE NAME: OPERATING SYSTEMS
COURSE CODE: BCS303
SEMESTER: 3
MODULE: 4
NUMBER OF HOURS:08
CONTENTS:
 Memory Management:
 Memory management strategies: Background;
 Swapping;
 Contiguous memory allocation;
 Paging;
 Structure of page table
 Segmentation
 Virtual Memory Management:
 Background;
 Demand paging;
 Copy-on-write;
 Page replacement;
 Allocation of frames;
 Thrashing
 Question Bank:

1
 Operating Systems BCS303

MODULE 4
MEMORY MANAGEMENT

Main Memory Management Strategies

 Every program to be executed has to be executed must be in memory. The instruction

must be fetched from memory before it is executed.
 In multi-tasking OS memory management is complex, because as processes are swapped
in and out of the CPU, their code and data must be swapped in and out of memory.

Basic Hardware

 Main memory, cache and CPU registers in the processors are the only storage spaces that
CPU can access directly.
 The program and data must be bought into the memory from the disk, for the process to
run. Each process has a separate memory space and must access only this range of legal
addresses. Protection of memory is required to ensure correct operation. This prevention
is provided by hardware implementation.
 Two registers are used - a base register and a limit register. The base register holds the
smallest legal physical memory address; the limit register specifies the size of the range.
 For example, The base register holds the smallest legal physical memory address; the limit
register specifies the size of the range. For example, if the base register holds 300040 and
limit register is 120900, then the program can legally access all addresses from 300040
through 420940 (inclusive).

Figure: A base and a limit-register define a logical-address space

 The base and limit registers can be loaded only by the operating system, which uses a
special privileged instruction. Since privileged instructions can be executed only in kernel
mode only the operating system can load the base and limit registers.

2
 Operating Systems BCS303

Figure: Hardware address protection with base and limit-registers

Address Binding
 User programs typically refer to memory addresses with symbolic names. These symbolic
names must be mapped or bound to physical memory addresses.
 Address binding of instructions to memory-addresses can happen at 3 different stages.

1. Compile Time - If it is known at compile time where a program will reside in physical
memory, then absolute code can be generated by the compiler, containing actual physical
addresses. However, if the load address changes at some later time, then the program will
have to be recompiled.
2. Load Time - If the location at which a program will be loaded is not known at compile
time, then the compiler must generate relocatable code, which references addresses
relative to the start of the program. If that starting address changes, then the program must
be reloaded but not recompiled.
3. Execution Time - If a program can be moved around in memory during the course of its
execution, then binding must be delayed until execution time.

3
 Operating Systems BCS303

Figure: Multistep processing of a user program

Logical Versus Physical Address Space

 The address generated by the CPU is a logical address, whereas the memory address
where programs are actually stored is a physical address.
 The set of all logical addresses used by a program composes the logical address space,
and the set of all corresponding physical addresses composes the physical address space.
 The run time mapping of logical to physical addresses is handled by the memory-
management unit (MMU).
 One of the simplest is a modification of the base-register scheme.
 The base register is termed a 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.

Figure: Dynamic relocation using a relocation-register

4
 Operating Systems BCS303

Dynamic Loading
 This can be used to obtain better memory-space utilization.
 A routine is not loaded until it is called.

This works as follows:

1. Initially, all routines are kept on disk in a relocatable-load format.
2. Firstly, the main-program is loaded into memory and is executed.
3. When a main-program calls the routine, the main-program first checks to see whether the
routine has been loaded.
4. If routine has been not yet loaded, the loader is called to load desired routine into
memory.
5. Finally, control is passed to the newly loaded-routine.

Advantages:
1. An unused routine is never loaded.
2. Useful when large amounts of code are needed to handle infrequently occurring cases.
3. Although the total program-size may be large, the portion that is used (and hence loaded)
may be much smaller.
4. Does not require special support from the OS.

Dynamic Linking and Shared Libraries

 With static linking library modules get fully included in executable modules, wasting
both disk space and main memory usage, because every program that included a certain
routine from the library would have to have their own copy of that routine linked into their
executable code.
 With dynamic linking, however, only a stub is linked into the executable module,
containing references to the actual library module linked in at run time.
 The stub is a small piece of code used to locate the appropriate memory-resident
library-routine.
 This method saves disk space, because the library routines do not need to be fully
included in the executable modules, only the stubs.
 An added benefit of dynamically linked libraries (DLLs, also known as shared
libraries or shared objects on UNIX systems) involves easy upgrades and updates.

Shared libraries
 A library may be replaced by a new version, and all programs that reference the library
will automatically use the new one.
 Version info. is included in both program & library so that programs won't accidentally
execute incompatible versions.

5
 Operating Systems BCS303

Swapping

 A process must be loaded into memory in order to execute.

 If there is not enough memory available to keep all running processes in memory at the
same time, then some processes that are not currently using the CPU may have their
memory swapped out to a fast local disk called the backing store.
 Swapping is the process of moving a process from memory to backing store and moving
another process from backing store to memory. Swapping is a very slow process compared
to other operations.
 A variant of swapping policy is used for priority-based scheduling algorithms. If a higher-
priority process arrives and wants service, the memory manager can swap out the lower-
priority process and then load and execute the higher-priority process. When the higher-
priority process finishes, the lower-priority process can be swapped back in and continued.
This variant of swapping is called roll out, roll in.

Swapping depends upon address-binding:

 If binding is done at load-time, then process cannot be easily moved to a different
location.
 If binding is done at execution-time, then a process can be swapped into a different
memory-space, because the physical-addresses are computed during execution-time.

Major part of swap-time is transfer-time; i.e. total transfer-time is directly proportional to the
amount of memory swapped.

Disadvantages:
1. Context-switch time is fairly high.
2. If we want to swap a process, we must be sure that it is completely idle.
Two solutions:
i) Never swap a process with pending I/O.
ii) Execute I/O operations only into OS buffers.

Figure: Swapping of two processes using a disk as a backing store

6
 Operating Systems BCS303

Example:
Assume that the user process is 10 MB in size and the backing store is a standard hard disk with
a transfer rate of 40 MB per second.
The actual transfer of the 10-MB process to or from main memory takes
10000 KB/40000 KB per second = 1/4 second
= 250 milliseconds.
Assuming that no head seeks are necessary, and assuming an average latency of 8 milliseconds,
the swap time is 258 milliseconds. Since we must both swap out and swap in, the total swap time
is about 516 milliseconds.

Contiguous Memory Allocation

 The main memory must accommodate both the operating system and the various user
processes. Therefore we need to allocate the parts of the main memory in the most efficient
way possible.
 Memory is usually divided into 2 partitions: One for the resident OS. One for the user
processes.
 Each process is contained in a single contiguous section of memory.

1. Memory Mapping and Protection

 Memory-protection means protecting OS from user-process and protecting user-

processes from one another.
 Memory-protection is done using
o Relocation-register: contains the value of the smallest physical-address.
o Limit-register: contains the range of logical-addresses.
 Each logical-address must be less than the limit-register.
 The MMU maps the logical-address dynamically by adding the value in the relocation-
register. This mapped-address is sent to memory
 When the CPU scheduler selects a process for execution, the dispatcher loads the
relocation and limit-registers with the correct values.
 Because every address generated by the CPU is checked against these registers, we can
protect the OS from the running-process.
 The relocation-register scheme provides an effective way to allow the OS size to change
dynamically.
 Transient OS code: Code that comes & goes as needed to save memory-space and
overhead for unnecessary swapping.

7
 Operating Systems BCS303

Figure: Hardware support for relocation and limit-registers

2. Memory Allocation

Two types of memory partitioning are:

1. Fixed-sized partitioning
2. Variable-sized partitioning

1. Fixed-sized Partitioning

 The memory is divided into fixed-sized partitions.

 Each partition may contain exactly one process.
 The degree of multiprogramming is bound by the number of partitions.
 When a partition is free, a process is selected from the input queue and loaded into the
free partition.
 When the process terminates, the partition becomes available for another process.

2. Variable-sized Partitioning

 The OS keeps a table indicating which parts of memory are available and which parts are
occupied.
 A hole is a block of available memory. Normally, memory contains a set of holes of
various sizes.
 Initially, all memory is available for user-processes and considered one large hole.
 When a process arrives, the process is allocated memory from a large hole.
 If we find the hole, we allocate only as much memory as is needed and keep the
remaining memory available to satisfy future requests.

8
 Operating Systems BCS303

Three strategies used to select a free hole from the set of available holes:

1. First Fit: Allocate the first hole that is big enough. Searching can start either at the
beginning of the set of holes or at the location where the previous first-fit search ended.

2. Best Fit: Allocate the smallest hole that is big enough. We must search the entire list,
unless the list is ordered by size. This strategy produces the smallest leftover hole.

3. Worst Fit: Allocate the largest hole. Again, we must search the entire list, unless it is
sorted by size. This strategy produces the largest leftover hole.

First-fit and best fit are better than worst fit in terms of decreasing time and storage utilization.

3. Fragmentation

Two types of memory fragmentation:

1. Internal fragmentation
2. External fragmentation

1. Internal Fragmentation
 The general approach is to break the physical-memory into fixed-sized blocks and
allocate memory in units based on block size.
 The allocated-memory to a process may be slightly larger than the requested-memory.
 The difference between requested-memory and allocated-memory is called internal
fragmentation i.e. Unused memory that is internal to a partition.

2. External Fragmentation
 External fragmentation occurs when there is enough total memory-space to satisfy a
request but the available-spaces are not contiguous. (i.e. storage is fragmented into a
large number of small holes).
 Both the first-fit and best-fit strategies for memory-allocation suffer from external
fragmentation.
 Statistical analysis of first-fit reveals that given N allocated blocks, another 0.5 N blocks
will be lost to fragmentation. This property is known as the 50-percent rule.

Two solutions to external fragmentation:

 Compaction: The goal is to shuffle the memory-contents to place all free memorytogether
in one large hole. Compaction is possible only if relocation is dynamic and done at
execution-time
 Permit the logical-address space of the processes to be non-contiguous. This allows a
process to be allocated physical-memory wherever such memory is available. Two
techniques achieve this solution: 1) Paging and 2) Segmentation.

9
 Operating Systems BCS303

Paging

 Paging is a memory-management scheme.

 This permits the physical-address space of a process to be non-contiguous.
 This also solves the considerable problem of fitting memory-chunks of varying sizes
onto the backing-store.
 Traditionally: Support for paging has been handled by hardware.
 Recent designs: The hardware & OS are closely integrated.

Basic Method of Paging

 The basic method for implementing paging involves breaking physical memory into fixed-
sized blocks called frames and breaking logical memory into blocks of the same size called
pages.
 When a process is to be executed, its pages are loaded into any available memory frames
from the backing store.
 The backing store is divided into fixed-sized blocks that are of the same size as the memory
frames.

The hardware support for paging is illustrated in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Paging hardware

 Address generated by CPU is divided into 2 parts (Figure 2):

1. Page-number (p) is used as an index to the page-table. The page-table contains the
base-address of each page in physical-memory.
2. Offset (d) is combined with the base-address to define the physical-address. This
physical-address is sent to the memory-unit.
 The page table maps the page number to a frame number, to yield a physical address
 The page table maps the page number to a frame number, to yield a physical address
which also has two parts: The frame number and the offset within that frame.
 The number of bits in the frame number determines how many frames the system can
address, and the number of bits in the offset determines the size of each frame.

10
 Operating Systems BCS303

The paging model of memory is shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2: Paging model of logical and physical memory.

 The page size (like the frame size) is defined by the hardware.
 The size of a page is typically a power of 2, varying between 512 bytes and 16 MB per
page, depending on the computer architecture.
 The selection of a power of 2 as a page size makes the translation of a logical address into
a page number and page offset.
 If the size of logical address space is 2m and a page size is 2n addressing units (bytes or
words), then the high-order m – n bits of a logical address designate the page number, and
the n low-order bits designate the page offset.

Thus, the logical address is as follows:

page number page offset
p d
m -n n

 When a process requests memory (e.g. when its code is loaded in from disk), free frames
are allocated from a free-frame list, and inserted into that process's page table.
 Processes are blocked from accessing anyone else's memory because all of their memory
requests are mapped through their page table. There is no way for them to generate an
address that maps into any other process's memory space.
 The operating system must keep track of each individual process's page table, updating it
whenever the process's pages get moved in and out of memory, and applying the correct
page table when processing system calls for a particular process. This all increases the
overhead involved when swapping processes in and out of the CPU.

11
 Operating Systems BCS303

Figure: Free frames (a) before allocation and (b) after allocation.

Hardware Support

Translation Look aside Buffer

 A special, small, fast lookup hardware cache, called a translation look-aside buffer
(TLB).
 Each entry in the TLB consists of two parts: a key (or tag) and a value.
 When the associative memory is presented with an item, the item is compared with all
keys simultaneously. If the item is found, the corresponding value field is returned. The
search is fast; the hardware, however, is expensive. Typically, the number of entries in a
TLB is small, often numbering between 64 and 1,024.
 The TLB contains only a few of the page-table entries.

Working:
 When a logical-address is generated by the CPU, its page-number is presented to the
TLB.
 If the page-number is found (TLB hit), its frame-number is immediately available and
used to access memory
 If page-number is not in TLB (TLB miss), a memory-reference to page table must be
made. The obtained frame-number can be used to access memory (Figure 1)

12
 Operating Systems BCS303

Figure 1: Paging hardware with TLB

 In addition, we add the page-number and frame-number to the TLB, so that they will be
found quickly on the next reference.
 If the TLB is already full of entries, the OS must select one for replacement.
 Percentage of times that a particular page-number is found in the TLB is called hit ratio.

Advantage: Search operation is fast.

Disadvantage: Hardware is expensive.

 Some TLBs have wired down entries that can't be removed.

 Some TLBs store ASID (address-space identifier) in each entry of the TLB that uniquely
identify each process and provide address space protection for that process.

Protection

 Memory-protection is achieved by protection-bits for each frame.

 The protection-bits are kept in the page-table.
 One protection-bit can define a page to be read-write or read-only.
 Every reference to memory goes through the page-table to find the correct frame-
number.
 Firstly, the physical-address is computed. At the same time, the protection-bit is checked
to verify that no writes are being made to a read-only page.
 An attempt to write to a read-only page causes a hardware-trap to the OS (or memory
protection violation).

13
 Operating Systems BCS303

Valid Invalid Bit

 This bit is attached to each entry in the page-table.
 Valid bit: “valid” indicates that the associated page is in the process’ logical address
space, and is thus a legal page
 Invalid bit: “invalid” indicates that the page is not in the process’ logical address space

Illegal addresses are trapped by use of valid-invalid bit.

The OS sets this bit for each page to allow or disallow access to the page.

Figure: Valid (v) or invalid (i) bit in a page-table

Shared Pages

 An advantage of paging is the possibility of sharing common code.

 Re-entrant code (Pure Code) is non-self-modifying code, it never changes during
execution.
 Two or more processes can execute the same code at the same time.
 Each process has its own copy of registers and data-storage to hold the data for the
process's execution.
 The data for 2 different processes will be different.
 Only one copy of the editor need be kept in physical-memory (Figure 5.12).
 Each user's page-table maps onto the same physical copy of the editor, but data pages are
mapped onto different frames.

Disadvantage:
Systems that use inverted page-tables have difficulty implementing shared-memory.

14
 Operating Systems BCS303

Figure: Sharing of code in a paging environment

Structure of the Page Table

The most common techniques for structuring the page table:

1. Hierarchical Paging
2. Hashed Page-tables
3. Inverted Page-tables

1. Hierarchical Paging
 Problem: Most computers support a large logical-address space (232 to 264). In these
systems, the page-table itself becomes excessively large.
 Solution: Divide the page-table into smaller pieces.

Two Level Paging Algorithm:

 The page-table itself is also paged.
 This is also known as a forward-mapped page-table because address translation works
from the outer page-table inwards.

15
 Operating Systems BCS303

Figure: A two-level page-table scheme

For example:
Consider the system with a 32-bit logical-address space and a page-size of 4 KB.
A logical-address is divided into
→ 20-bit page-number and
→ 12-bit page-offset.
Since the page-table is paged, the page-number is further divided into
→ 10-bit page-number and
→ 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

The address-translation method for this architecture is shown in below figure. Because address
translation works from the outer page table inward, this scheme is also known as a forward-
mapped page table.

Figure: Address translation for a two-level 32-bit paging architecture

16
 Operating Systems BCS303

2. Hashed Page Tables

 This approach is used for handling address spaces larger than 32 bits.
 The hash-value is the virtual page-number.
 Each entry in the hash-table contains a linked-list of elements that hash to the same
location (to handle collisions).
 Each element consists of 3 fields:
1. Virtual page-number
2. Value of the mapped page-frame and
3. Pointer to the next element in the linked-list.

The algorithm works as follows:

 The virtual page-number is hashed into the hash-table.
 The virtual page-number is compared with the first element in the linked-list.
 If there is a match, the corresponding page-frame (field 2) is used to form the desired
physical-address.
 If there is no match, subsequent entries in the linked-list are searched for a matching
virtual page-number.

Figure: Hashed page-table

3. Inverted Page Tables

 Has one entry for each real page of memory.
 Each entry consists of virtual-address of the page stored in that real memory-location
and information about the process that owns the page.
 Each virtual-address consists of a triplet <process-id, page-number, offset>.
 Each inverted page-table entry is a pair <process-id, page-number>

17
 Operating Systems BCS303

Figure: Inverted page-table

The algorithm works as follows:

1. When a memory-reference occurs, part of the virtual-address, consisting of <process-id,
page-number>, is presented to the memory subsystem.
2. The inverted page-table is then searched for a match.
3. If a match is found, at entry i-then the physical-address <i, offset> is generated.
4. If no match is found, then an illegal address access has been attempted.

Advantage:
1. Decreases memory needed to store each page-table

Disadvantages:
1. Increases amount of time needed to search table when a page reference occurs.
2. Difficulty implementing shared-memory

Segmentation

Basic Method of Segmentation

 This is a memory-management scheme that supports user-view of memory (Figure 1).
 A logical-address space is a collection of segments.
 Each segment has a name and a length.
 The addresses specify both segment-name and offset within the segment.
 Normally, the user-program is compiled, and the compiler automatically constructs
segments reflecting the input program.
 For ex: The code, Global variables, The heap, from which memory is allocated, The
stacks used by each thread, The standard C library

18
 Operating Systems BCS303

Figure: Programmer’s view of a program

Hardware support for Segmentation

 Segment-table maps 2 dimensional user-defined addresses into one-dimensional physical
addresses.
 In the segment-table, each entry has following 2 fields:
1. Segment-base contains starting physical-address where the segment resides in
memory.
2. Segment-limit specifies the length of the segment (Figure 2).
 A logical-address consists of 2 parts:
1. Segment-number(s) is used as an index to the segment-table
2. Offset(d) must be between 0 and the segment-limit.
 If offset is not between 0 & segment-limit, then we trap to the OS(logical-addressing
attempt beyond end of segment).
 If offset is legal, then it is added to the segment-base to produce the physical-memory
address.

Figure: Segmentation hardware

19
 Operating Systems BCS303

VIRTUAL MEMORYMANAGEMENT

 Virtual memory is a technique that allows for the execution of partially loaded process.
 Advantages:
 A program will not be limited by the amount of physical memory that is available
user can able to write in to large virtual space.
 Since each program takes less amount of physical memory, more than one program
could be run at the same time which can increase the throughput and CPU
utilization.
 Less i/o operation is needed to swap or load user program in to memory. So each
user program could run faster.

Fig: Virtual memory that is larger than physical memory.

 Virtual memory is the separation of users logical memory from physical memory. This
separation allows an extremely large virtual memory to be provided when these is less
physical memory.
 Separating logical memory from physical memory also allows files and memory to be
shared by several different processes through page sharing.

20
 Operating Systems BCS303

Fig: Shared Library using Virtual Memory

 Virtual memory is implemented using Demand Paging.

 Virtual address space: Every process has a virtual address space i.e used as the stack or
heap grows in size.

Fig: Virtual address space

DEMAND PAGING
 A demand paging is similar to paging system with swapping when we want to execute a
process we swap the process the in to memory otherwise it will not be loaded in to
memory.
 A swapper manipulates the entire processes, where as a pager manipulates individual
pages of the process.
 Bring a page into memory only when it is needed
 Less I/O needed
 Less memory needed
 Faster response

21
 Operating Systems BCS303

 More users
 Page is needed ⇒ reference to it
 invalid reference ⇒abort
 not-in-memory ⇒ bring to memory
 Lazy swapper– never swaps a page into memory unless page will be needed
 Swapper that deals with pages is a pager.

Fig: Transfer of a paged memory into continuous disk space

 Basic concept: Instead of swapping the whole process the pager swaps only the necessary pages
in to memory. Thus it avoids reading unused pages and decreases the swap time and amount of
physical memory needed.
 The valid-invalid bit scheme can be used to distinguish between the pages that are on the disk
and that are in memory.
 With each page table entry a valid–invalid bit is associated
 (v ⇒ in-memory, i⇒not-in-memory)
 Initially valid–invalid bit is set to ion all entries
 Example of a page table snapshot:

 During address translation, if valid–invalid bit in page table entry is I ⇒ page fault.
 If the bit is valid then the page is both legal and is in memory.
 If the bit is invalid then either page is not valid or is valid but is currently on the disk. Marking

22
 Operating Systems BCS303

a page as invalid will have no effect if the processes never access to that page. Suppose if it
access the page which is marked invalid, causes a page fault trap. This may result in failure of
OS to bring the desired page in to memory.

Fig: Page Table when some pages are not in main memory

Page Fault

If a page is needed that was not originally loaded up, then a page fault trap is generated.
Steps in Handling a Page Fault
1. The memory address requested is first checked, to make sure it was a valid memory
request.
2. If the reference is to an invalid page, the process is terminated. Otherwise, if the page is
not present in memory, it must be paged in.
3. A free frame is located, possibly from a free-frame list.
4. A disk operation is scheduled to bring in the necessary page from disk.
5. After the page is loaded to memory, the process's page table is updated with the new frame
number, and the invalid bit is changed to indicate that this is now a valid page reference.
6. The instruction that caused the page fault must now be restarted from the beginning.

23
 Operating Systems BCS303

Fig: steps in handling page fault

Pure Demand Paging: Never bring a page into main memory until it is required.
 We can start executing a process without loading any of its pages into main memory.
 Page fault occurs for the non memory resident pages.
 After the page is brought into memory, process continues to execute.
 Again page fault occurs for the next page.

Hardware support: For demand paging the same hardware is required as paging and swapping.
1. Page table:-Has the ability to mark an entry invalid through valid-invalid bit.
2. Secondary memory:-This holds the pages that are not present in main memory.

Performance of Demand Paging: Demand paging can have significant effect on the performance
of the computer system.
 Let P be the probability of the page fault (0<=P<=1)
 Effective access time = (1-P) * ma + P * page fault.
 Where P = page fault and ma = memory access time.
 Effective access time is directly proportional to page fault rate. It is important to keep page
fault rate low in demand paging.

24
 Operating Systems BCS303

Demand Paging Example

 Memory access time = 200 nanoseconds
 Average page-fault service time = 8milliseconds
 EAT = (1 – p) x 200 + p (8milliseconds)
= (1 – p x 200 + p x 8,000,000
= 200 + p x 7,999,800
 If one access out of 1,000 causes a page fault, then EAT = 8.2 microseconds. This is a
slowdown by a factor of 40.

COPY-ON-WRITE
 Technique initially allows the parent and the child to share the same pages. These pages
are marked as copy on- write pages i.e., if either process writes to a shared page,a copy
of shared page is created.
 Eg:-If a child process try to modify a page containing portions of the stack; the OS
recognizes them as a copy-on-write page and create a copy of this page and maps it on
to the address space of the child process. So the child process will modify its copied page
and not the page belonging to parent. The new pages are obtained from the poolof free
pages.
 The previous contents of pages are erased before getting them into main memory. This
is called Zero – on fill demand.

a) Before Process 1 modifies pageC

b) After process 1 modifies page C

25
 Operating Systems BCS303

PAGE REPLACEMENT
 Page replacement policy deals with the solution of pages in memory to be replaced by a new
page that must be brought in. When a user process is executing a page fault occurs.
 The hardware traps to the operating system, which checks the internal table to see that this
is a page fault and not an illegal memory access.
 The operating system determines where the derived page is residing on the disk, and this finds
that there are no free frames on the list of free frames.
 When all the frames are in main memory, it is necessary to bring a new page to satisfy the
page fault, replacement policy is concerned with selecting a page currently in memory to be
replaced.
 The page i,e to be removed should be the page i,e least likely to be referenced in future.

Fig: Page Replacement

Working of Page Replacement Algorithm

1. Find the location of derived page on the disk.
2. Find a free frame x If there is a free frame, use it. x Otherwise, use a replacement
algorithm to select a victim.
 Write the victim page to the disk.
 Change the page and frame tables accordingly.
3. Read the desired page into the free frame; change the page and frame tables.
4. Restart the user process.

Victim Page
 The page that is supported out of physical memory is called victim page.
 If no frames are free, the two page transforms come (out and one in) are read. This will see
the effective access time.
 Each page or frame may have a dirty (modify) bit associated with the hardware. The
modify bit for a page is set by the hardware whenever any word or byte in the page is

26
 Operating Systems BCS303

written into, indicating that the page has been modified.

 When we select the page for replacement, we check its modify bit. If the bit is set, then the
page is modified since it was read from the disk.
 If the bit was not set, the page has not been modified since it was read into memory.
Therefore, if the copy of the page has not been modified we can avoid writing the memory
page to the disk, if it is already there. Sum pages cannot be modified.

Modify bit/ Dirty bit :

 Each page/frame has a modify bit associated with it.
 If the page is not modified (read-only) then one can discard such page without writing it
onto the disk. Modify bit of such page is set to0.
 Modify bit is set to 1, if the page has been modified. Such pages must be written to the
disk.
 Modify bit is used to reduce overhead of page transfers – only modified pages are written
to disk

PAGE REPLACEMENT ALGORITHMS

 Want lowest page-fault rate
 Evaluate algorithm by running it on a particular string of memory references (reference
string) and computing the number of page faults on that string
 In all our examples, the reference string is
1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 5, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

FIFO Algorithm:
 This is the simplest page replacement algorithm. A FIFO replacement algorithm associates
each page the time when that page was brought into memory.
 When a Page is to be replaced the oldest one is selected.
 We replace the queue at the head of the queue. When a page is brought into memory, we
insert it at the tail of the queue.
 In the following example, a reference string is given and there are 3 free frames. There are
20 page requests, which results in 15 page faults

27
 Operating Systems BCS303

Belady’s Anomaly
 For some page replacement algorithm, the page fault may increase as the number of
allocated frames increases. FIFO replacement algorithm may face this problem.
more frames ⇒ more page faults

Example: Consider the following references string with frames initially empty.
 The first three references (7,0,1) cases page faults and are brought into the empty frames.
 The next references 2 replaces page 7 because the page 7 was brought in first. x Since 0 is
the next references and 0 is already in memory e has no page faults.
 The next references 3 results in page 0 being replaced so that the next references to 0
causer page fault. This will continue till the end of string. There are 15 faults all together.

FIFO Illustrating Belady’s Anomaly

28
 Operating Systems BCS303

Optimal Algorithm
 Optimal page replacement algorithm is mainly to solve the problem of Belady’s Anomaly.
 Optimal page replacement algorithm has the lowest page fault rate of all algorithms.
 An optimal page replacement algorithm exists and has been called OPT.

The working is simple “Replace the page that will not be used for the longest period of time”
Example: consider the following reference string
 The first three references cause faults that fill the three empty frames.
 The references to page 2 replaces page 7, because 7 will not be used until reference 18. x
The page 0 will be used at 5 and page 1 at 14.
 With only 9 page faults, optimal replacement is much better than a FIFO, which had 15
faults. This algorithm is difficult t implement because it requires future knowledge of
reference strings.
 Replace page that will not be used for longest period of time

Optimal Page Replacement

Least Recently Used (LRU) Algorithm

 The LRU (Least Recently Used) algorithm, predicts that the page that has not been used
in the longest time is the one that will not be used again in the near future.
 Some view LRU as analogous to OPT, but here we look backwards in time instead of
forwards.

The main problem to how to implement LRU is the LRU requires additional h/w assistance.

29
 Operating Systems BCS303

Two implementation are possible:

1. Counters: In this we associate each page table entry a time -of -use field, and add to the
cpu a logical clock or counter. The clock is incremented for each memory reference.
When a reference to a page is made, the contents of the clock register are copied to the
time-of-use field in the page table entry for that page. In this way wehave the time
of last reference to each page we replace the page with smallest time value. The time
must also be maintained when page tables are changed.
2. Stack: Another approach to implement LRU replacement is to keep a stack of page
numbers when a page is referenced it is removed from the stack and put on to the top of
stack. In this way the top of stack is always the most recently used page and the bottom
in least recently used page. Since the entries are removed from the stack it is best
implement by a doubly linked list. With a head and tail pointer.

Note: Neither optimal replacement nor LRU replacement suffers from Belady’s Anamoly. These are
called stack algorithms.

LRU-Approximation Page Replacement

 Many systems offer some degree of hardware support, enough to approximate LRU.
 In particular, many systems provide a reference bit for every entry in a page table, which
is set anytime that page is accessed. Initially all bits are set to zero, and they can also all be
cleared at any time. One bit distinguishes pages that have been accessed since the last clear
from those that have not been accessed.
Additional-Reference-Bits Algorithm
 An 8-bit byte (reference bit) is stored for each page in a table in memory.
 At regular intervals (say, every 100 milliseconds), a timer interrupt transfers control to the
operating system. The operating system shifts the reference bit for each page into the high-
order bit of its 8-bit byte, shifting the other bits right by 1 bit and discarding the low-order
bit.
 These 8-bit shift registers contain the history of page use for the last eight time periods.
 If the shift register contains 00000000, then the page has not been used for eight time
periods.
 A page with a history register value of 11000100 has been used more recently than one with
a value of 01110111.
Second- chance (clock) page replacement algorithm
 The second chance algorithm is a FIFO replacement algorithm, except the reference bit
is used to give pages a second chance at staying in the page table.
 When a page must be replaced, the page table is scanned in a FIFO (circular queue)
manner.
 If a page is found with its reference bit as ‘0’, then that page is selected as the next
victim.

30
 Operating Systems BCS303

 If the reference bitvalueis‘1’, then the page is given a second chance and its reference bit
value is cleared (assigned as‘0’).
 Thus, a page that is given a second chance will not be replaced until all other pages have
been replaced (or given second chances). In addition, if a page is used often, then it sets
its reference bit again.
 This algorithm is also known as the clock algorithm.

Enhanced Second-Chance Algorithm

 The enhanced second chance algorithm looks at the reference bit and the modify bit ( dirty
bit ) as an ordered page, and classifies pages into one of four classes:
1. ( 0, 0 ) - Neither recently used nor modified.
2. ( 0, 1 ) - Not recently used, but modified.
3. ( 1, 0 ) - Recently used, but clean.
4. ( 1, 1 ) - Recently used and modified.
 This algorithm searches the page table in a circular fashion, looking for the first page it can
find in the lowest numbered category. i.e. it first makes a pass looking for a ( 0, 0 ), and then
if it can't find one, it makes another pass looking for a(0,1),etc.
 The main difference between this algorithm and the previous one is the preference for
replacing clean pages if possible.

Count Based Page Replacement

There is many other algorithms that can be used for page replacement, we can keep a counter
of the number of references that has made to a page.
a) LFU (least frequently used):
This causes the page with the smallest count to be replaced. The reason for this selection
is that actively used page should have a large reference count.

31
 Operating Systems BCS303

This algorithm suffers from the situation in which a page is used heavily during the initial
phase of a process but never used again. Since it was used heavily, it has a large count
and remains in memory even though it is no longer needed.
b)MFU Algorithm:
based on the argument that the page with the smallest count was probably just brought in
and has yet to be used

ALLOCATION OF FRAMES
 The absolute minimum number of frames that a process must be allocated is dependent
on system architecture.
 The maximum number is defined by the amount of available physical memory.
Allocation Algorithms
After loading of OS, there are two ways in which the allocation of frames can be done to
the processes.
 Equal Allocation- If there are m frames available and n processes to share them, each
process gets m / n frames, and the left over’s are kept in a free-frame buffer pool.
 Proportional Allocation - Allocate the frames proportionally depending on the size of
the process. If the size of process i is Si, and S is the sum of size of all processes in the
system, then the allocation for process Pi is ai= m * Si/ S. where m is the free frames
available in the system.
 Consider a system with a 1KB frame size. If a small student process of 10 KB and an
interactive database of 127 KB are the only two processes running in a system with 62
free frames.
 with proportional allocation, we would split 62 frames between two processes, asfollows
m=62, S = (10+127)=137
Allocation for process 1 = 62 X 10/137 ~ 4 Allocation for process 2 = 62 X
127/137 ~57
Thus allocates 4 frames and 57 frames to student process and database
respectively.
 Variations on proportional allocation could consider priority of process rather than just
their size.
Global versus Local Allocation
 Page replacement can occur both at local or global level.
 With local replacement, the number of pages allocated to a process is fixed, and page
replacement occurs only amongst the pages allocated to this process.
 With global replacement, any page may be a potential victim, whether it currently belongs
to the process seeking a free frame or not.
 Local page replacement allows processes to better control their own page fault rates, and
leads to more consistent performance of a given process over different system load levels.

32
 Operating Systems BCS303

 Global page replacement is over all more efficient, and is the more commonly used
approach.

Non-Uniform Memory Access (New)

 Usually the time required to access all memory in a system is equivalent.
 This may not be the case in multiple-processor systems, especially where each CPU is
physically located on a separate circuit board which also holds some portion of the overall
system memory.
 In such systems, CPU s can access memory that is physically located on the same board
much faster than the memory on the other boards.
 The basic solution is akin to processor affinity - At the same time that we try to schedule
processes on the same CPU to minimize cache misses, we also try to allocate memory for
those processes on the same boards, to minimize access times.

THRASHING
 If the number of frames allocated to a low-priority process falls below the minimum
number required by the computer architecture then we suspend the process execution.
 A process is thrashing if it is spending more time in paging than executing.
 If the processes do not have enough number of frames, it will quickly page fault. During
this it must replace some page that is not currently in use. Consequently it quickly faults
again and again.
 The process continues to fault, replacing pages for which it then faults and brings back.
This high paging activity is called thrashing. The phenomenon of excessively moving
pages back and forth b/w memory and secondary has been called thrashing.

Cause of Thrashing
 Thrashing results in severe performance problem.
 The operating system monitors the cpu utilization is low. We increase the degree of
multi programming by introducing new process to the system.
 A global page replacement algorithm replaces pages with no regards to the process to
which they belong.

The figure shows the thrashing

 As the degree of multi programming increases, more slowly until a maximum is

33
 Operating Systems BCS303

reached. If the degree of multi programming is increased further thrashing sets in and
the cpu utilization drops sharply.
 At this point, to increases CPU utilization and stop thrashing, we must increase degree
of multiprogramming.
 we can limit the effect of thrashing by using a local replacement algorithm. To prevent
thrashing, we must provide a process as many frames as it needs.

Locality of Reference:
 As the process executes it moves from locality to locality.
 A locality is a set of pages that are actively used.
 A program may consist of several different localities, which may overlap.
 Locality is caused by loops in code that find to reference arrays and other data
structures by indices.
 The ordered list of page number accessed by a program is called reference string.
 Locality is of two types :
1. spatial locality 2. temporal locality

Working set model

 Working set model algorithm uses the current memory requirements to determine the
number of page frames to allocate to the process, an informal definition is “thecollection
of pages that a process is working with and which must be resident if the process to
avoid thrashing”. The idea is to use the recent needs of a process to predict its future
reader.
 The working set is an approximation of programs locality. Ex: given a sequence of
memory reference, if the working set window size to memory references, then working
set at time t1 is{1,2,5,6,7} and at t2 is changed to {3,4}
 At any given time, all pages referenced by a process in its last 4 seconds of execution are
considered to compromise its working set.
 A process will never execute until its working set is resident in main memory.
 Pages outside the working set can be discarded at any movement.
 Working sets are not enough and we must also introduce balance set.
 If the sum of the working sets of all the run able process is greater than the size of
memory the refuse some process for a while.
 Divide the run able process into two groups, active and inactive. The collection of
active set is called the balance set. When a process is made active its working set
is loaded.
 Some algorithm must be provided for moving process into and out of the balance
set. As a working set is changed, corresponding change is made to the balance set.
 Working set presents thrashing by keeping the degree of multi programming as
high as possible. Thus if optimizes the CPU utilization. The main disadvantageof
this is keeping track of the working set.

34
 Operating Systems BCS303

Page-Fault Frequency
 When page- fault rate is too high, the process needs more frames and when it is too low,
the process may have too many frames.
 The upper and lower bounds can be established on the page-fault rate. If the actual
page- fault rate exceeds the upper limit, allocate the process another frame or suspend the
process.
 If the page-fault rate falls below the lower limit, remove a frame from the process. Thus,
we can directly measure and control the page-fault rate to prevent thrashing.

35
 Operating Systems BCS303

QUESTION BANK

1. Describe the steps in handling page faults?

2. For the following page reference string 1,2,3,4,1,2,5,1,2,3,4,5. Calculate the page faults
using FIFO, Optimal and LRU using 3. Which algorithm is most significant?

3. Explain different allocation methods?

4. Explain Demand paging in memory management scheme.
5. For the following page reference string 7,0,1,2,0,3,0,4,2,3,0,3,2,1,2,0,1,7,0,1. Calculatethe page
faults using FIFO, Optimal and LRU using 3 which algorithm is most significant?
6. Explain copy-on-write process in virtual memory.
7. Explain the various types of directory structures with required diagram.
8. Explain the various file attributes in a file system.
9. Explain the various file operations in a file system.
10. Explain the various file types in a file system
11. Explain with diagram two disk allocation method in detail?
12. List the different operations performed on a directory
13. Explain tree structured directory structure

MEMORY MANAGEMENT

1. Explain the process of segmentation with an example in detail?

2. Explain paging Hardware with TLB?
3. Discus structure of page table with suitable diagram?
4. Discuss briefly about demand – paging in a memory management scheme?
5. Discuss briefly about contiguous memory allocation with illustration?
6. Explain with a diagram, how TLB is used to solve the problem of simple paging scheme.
7. Illustrate with example the internal and external fragmentation problem
8. What do you mean by address binding? Explain with the necessary steps, the binding of
instructions and data to memory addresses

36