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CHAPTER 3
Memory management

Over view of physical memory and

memory management
•Hardware overlays
•Partitioning
•Swapping
Introduction to Virtual Memory
•Paging and segmentation
•Page Replacement Policies.
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Introduction
• Memory is an important resource that needs to be
managed properly.
• Why?-
• they are limited in nature!
• What is programmers/expert users need?
• Private, infinitely large and fast memory that is also nonvolatile.
• Can the technology provide that?
• NO but, may be in the future.
• Hence the operating system owes to manage the
memory.
• How?
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Introduction…
 The OS has a part called Memory manager that manipulates
and perform an operation on memory hierarchy.
<1
Registers
nsec

2 nsec
Cache Memory
10 nsec
Main Memory
10 msec
Magnetic Disk
100 sec
Magnetic Tape

◦ Hence the MM has a responsibility to

 Keeps track of which is in use or not.
 Allocate and De allocate
 Manage Swapping and etc.
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Memory Management
 Memory management systems are divided in to
two classes.
◦ Those that move processes back and forth b/n main
memory and disk (paging and swapping) b/c of
memory insufficiency
◦ Those that do not (simpler)

 Also the realm of software tech. persuade the

creation of efficient memory.
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Simpler ones… mono-programming

0X FFF Devices drivers

OS in ROM in ROM

User Program
User Program

User program
OS in RAM OS in RAM
0

Formerly in main Palm tops, Early PC w/r

frames and embedded portion of a
minicomputers systems and Smart system is called
cards BIOS

 In all cases only one process can run at a time

◦ No Swapping and Paging (ex. Three level scheduling in batch system)
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Multiprogramming with Fixed Partitions

• An easy way to achieve MP is to
divide Memory in to Unequal
partitions.
• For efficient CPU utilization
• Partitioning can be done
manually.
• Fixed memory partitions
• Some space may not be used by
a job hence will be lost
• Multiple input queue
• Disadvantageous in the case of P3
and P1
• Single input queue
• Small Jobs can be unworthy of
having the whole partitions.
• Another approach is implemented
• Always reserve a small partition and
maximum skip time
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Swapping

• Memory allocation changes as processes come into

memory and leave it.
• The shaded regions are unused memory.
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Swapping…
 Allocating space
for a growing data
segment.
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Swapping…
• Allocating space for a
growing stack and a
growing data segment.
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MM with Bit Maps and Linked List

• As memory is assigned dynamically
OS must manage it.
• There are two ways of keep track of
memory usage
• Bitmaps
• Linked list/free list.
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MM using Bitmaps
 The Size of
the bitmap
depends on
the size of
memory and
size of the
allocation unit.

 a) A part of memory with five processes and three holes. The tick marks
show the memory allocation units. The shaded regions (0 in the bitmap) are
free.
 (b) The corresponding bitmap.
 (c) The same information as a list.
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Activity

Represent the following memory status using

bitmap and linked list:
P1 P2 P3 P4
•

0 8 16 24 32
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MM using Linked List

• Four neighbor combinations for the terminating process, X.
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Virtual Memory
 Formerly Overlays were used as a virtual memory.
◦ Splitting done manually by the programmer
◦ Swapping done by the system
But some overlay systems were so complex and expensive to
work with. And the first task, by nature, is time consuming and
boring.
 Hence in 1961 a method of doing every thing using system
is advised.
◦ i.e. Virtual Memory.
 The main idea is to put currently used data, program and
stack in the main memory and the rest in the disk.
◦ i.e. X MB Program can run on YMB machine where X>>Y and X and
Y are size of power of 2
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Paging
• VM uses a technique called paging.
• For instance- the instruction MOV REG,1000 –copy the content of
memory address 1000 in to REG
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Paging…
 Pages and page frames are
always equal. Here 4KB
◦ How much pages and page
frames can we get from 64 KB
of Virtual address space and
32 KB of physical memory?
 Lets do the following
instruction.
 MOV REG 0
 MOV REG 8192
will be transformed in to
___, and ____, output will
be moved to bus
What happens if the
program tries to use MOV
REG, 32780
See answer next slide:
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Answer to instructions MOV REG, 0 and MOV REG 8192:

• Virtual address 0 is sent to the MMU.
• The MMU sees that this virtual address falls in page 0 (0 to
4095), which according to its mapping is page frame 2 (8192
to 12287).
• It thus transforms the address to 8192 and outputs address
8192 onto the bus.
• The memory knows nothing at all about the MMU and just
sees a request for reading or writing address 8192, which it
honors.
• Thus, the MMU has effectively mapped all virtual addresses
between 0 and 4095 onto physical addresses 8192 to 12287.
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What happens if the program tries to use MOV REG, 32780?

Answer:
• MOV REG, 32780:
• Which is byte 12 within virtual page 8 (starting at 32768);
• The MMU notices that the page is unmapped (indicated by a
cross in the figure) and causes the CPU to trap to the
operating system.
• This trap is called a page fault.
• The operating system picks a little-used page frame and
writes its contents back to the disk.
• It then fetches the page just referenced into the page frame
just freed, changes the map, and restarts the trapped
instruction.
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Paging … page tables

 Purpose : map virtual
pages onto page Frames
 Major issues to be faced
1. The page table can be
extremely large
2. The mapping must be
fast.
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Paging … multilevel page tables

• A simple example is shown in Fig of last slide:
• (a), we have a 32-bit virtual address that is
• partitioned into a 10-bit PT1 field, a 10-bit PT2 field, and a 12-
bit Offset field.
• Since offsets are 12 bits, pages are 4 KB, and there are a
total of 220 of them.
• Entry 0 of the top-level page table points to the page table for
the program text, entry 1 points to the page table for the data,
and entry 1023 points to the page table for the stack.
• The shaded entries are not used.
• The PT2 field is now used as an index into the selected
second-level page table to find the page frame number for the
page itself.
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Page table Entry Structure - sample

 The exact layout of an entry in the page table is highly machine dependent, but
the kind of information present is roughly the same from machine to machine.
 The size varies from computer to computer, but 32 bits is a common size The
most important field is the Pa g e frame number.
 After all, the goal of the page mapping is to output this value.
 Next to it we have the Present/absent bit. If this bit is 1, the entry is valid and can
be used, else the virtual page to which the entry belongs is not currently in
memory.
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Page table Entry Structure – sample, …. (Key)

• The Protection bits tell what kinds of access are permitted.

• In the simplest form, this field contains 1 bit, with 0 for
read/write and 1 for read only.
• The Modified and Referenced bits keep track of page usage.
• When a page is written to, the hardware automatically sets
the Modified bit.
• The Referenced bit is set whenever a page is referenced,
either for reading or for writing.
• Finally, the last bit allows caching to be disabled for the page.
• This feature is important for pages that map onto device
registers rather than memory.
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What happens if there is no free frame?

• Page replacement – find some page in
memory, but not really in use, swap it out.
• Algorithm- want an algorithm which will result in
minimum number of page faults.
• performance – reduce overhead
• Same page may be brought into memory
several times.
• Same with cache memory cleaning and
removing heavily used web pages from the
server
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Page Replacement
• Prevent over-allocation of memory by modifying page-fault service routine to include

page replacement.
• A process may have 10 pages but only 5 are in use.

• Demand paging only brings in those 5.

• This allows us to bring more programs into memory – increase degree of multiprogramming

or over-allocating memory.

• If have 40 frames, run 8 processes using 5 pages each instead of 4 processes using 10

pages.

• What happens when a process suddenly needs all 10 pages? All memory is in use.

• Terminate process – why, it is running normally

• Swap out a process – will be considered later

• Page replacement
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Need For Page Replacement

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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
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What happens when we have 4 frames?

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 Replace page that will not be used for longest period of

time.

 Each page will be labeled the number of instruction that

will be executed before that page is needed/ first
referenced.

 The only problem with this algorithm is unrealizable…

THE ONLY PROBLEM?

 How do you know this? Requires future knowledge!

 Used as yardstick to evaluate how well other algorithms

perform.
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 The optimal algorithm uses the time when a page is to be used

next
 FIFO uses the time when a page was brought into memory
 LRU – use the recent past as an approximation of the near
future.
 Replace the page that has not been used for the longest period of
time.
 Counter implementation
◦ Every page entry has a counter; every time page is referenced through
this entry, copy the clock into the counter.
◦ When a page needs to be changed, look at the counters to determine
which one is the smallest value and use that frame.
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 Global replacement – process selects a

replacement frame from the set of all frames; one
process can take a frame from another.
◦ A process is no longer in control of its page-fault rate,
usually results in greater system throughput and its
therefore more commonly used
 Local replacement – each process selects from
only its own set of allocated frames.
◦ Does not take advantage of less used pages in other
processes which could improve overall system
throughput