Virtual Memory

Chapter 8

Hardware and Control

Structures
Memory references are dynamically translated
into physical addresses at run time
A process may be swapped in and out of main
memory such that it occupies different regions

A process may be broken up into pieces that

do not need to located contiguously in main
memory
All pieces of a process do not need to be
loaded in main memory during execution
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Execution of a Program
Operating system brings into main
memory a few pieces of the program
Resident set - portion of process that is
in main memory
An interrupt is generated when an
address is needed that is not in main
memory
Operating system places the process in a
blocking state
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Execution of a Program
Piece of process that contains the logical
address is brought into main memory
Operating system issues a disk I/O Read
request
Another process is dispatched to run while
the disk I/O takes place
An interrupt is issued when disk I/O
complete which causes the operating system
to place the affected process in the Ready
state
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Advantages of
Breaking up a Process
More processes may be maintained in
main memory
Only load in some of the pieces of each
process
With so many processes in main memory, it
is very likely a process will be in the Ready
state at any particular time

A process may be larger than all of main

memory
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Types of Memory
Real memory
Main memory

Virtual memory
Memory on disk
Allows for effective multiprogramming and
relieves the user of tight constraints of main
memory

Thrashing
Swapping out a piece of a process just
before that piece is needed
The processor spends most of its time
swapping pieces rather than executing
user instructions

Principle of Locality
Program and data references within a
process tend to cluster
Only a few pieces of a process will be
needed over a short period of time
Possible to make intelligent guesses
about which pieces will be needed in the
future
This suggests that virtual memory may
work efficiently
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Support Needed for

Virtual Memory
Hardware must support paging and
segmentation
Operating system must be able to
management the movement of pages
and/or segments between secondary
memory and main memory

Paging
Each process has its own page table
Each page table entry contains the frame
number of the corresponding page in
main memory
A bit is needed to indicate whether the
page is in main memory or not

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Paging

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Modify Bit in
Page Table
Modify bit is needed to indicate if the
page has been altered since it was last
loaded into main memory
If no change has been made, the page
does not have to be written to the disk
when it needs to be swapped out

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Two-Level Scheme for

32-bit Address

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Page Tables
The entire page table may take up too
much main memory
Page tables are also stored in virtual
memory
When a process is running, part of its
page table is in main memory

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Inverted Page Table

Used on PowerPC, UltraSPARC, and
IA-64 architecture
Page number portion of a virtual address
is mapped into a hash value
Hash value points to inverted page table
Fixed proportion of real memory is
required for the tables regardless of the
number of processes
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Inverted Page Table

Page number
Process identifier
Control bits
Chain pointer

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Translation Lookaside Buffer

Each virtual memory reference can
cause two physical memory accesses
One to fetch the page table
One to fetch the data

To overcome this problem a high-speed

cache is set up for page table entries
Called a Translation Lookaside Buffer
(TLB)
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Translation Lookaside Buffer

Contains page table entries that have
been most recently used

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Translation Lookaside Buffer

Given a virtual address, processor
examines the TLB
If page table entry is present (TLB hit),
the frame number is retrieved and the
real address is formed
If page table entry is not found in the
TLB (TLB miss), the page number is
used to index the process page table
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Translation Lookaside Buffer

First checks if page is already in main
memory
If not in main memory a page fault is issued

The TLB is updated to include the new

page entry

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Page Size
Smaller page size, less amount of internal
fragmentation
Smaller page size, more pages required per
process
More pages per process means larger page tables
Larger page tables means large portion of page
tables in virtual memory
Secondary memory is designed to efficiently
transfer large blocks of data so a large page size
is better
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Page Size
Small page size, large number of pages
will be found in main memory
As time goes on during execution, the
pages in memory will all contain
portions of the process near recent
references. Page faults low.
Increased page size causes pages to
contain locations further from any recent
reference. Page faults rise.
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Example Page Sizes

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Segmentation
May be unequal, dynamic size
Simplifies handling of growing data
structures
Allows programs to be altered and
recompiled independently
Lends itself to sharing data among
processes
Lends itself to protection
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Segment Tables
Corresponding segment in main memory
Each entry contains the length of the
segment
A bit is needed to determine if segment
is already in main memory
Another bit is needed to determine if the
segment has been modified since it was
loaded in main memory
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Segment Table Entries

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Combined Paging and

Segmentation
Paging is transparent to the programmer
Segmentation is visible to the
programmer
Each segment is broken into fixed-size
pages

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Combined Segmentation and

Paging

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Fetch Policy
Fetch Policy
Determines when a page should be brought
into memory
Demand paging only brings pages into main
memory when a reference is made to a
location on the page
Many page faults when process first started

Prepaging brings in more pages than needed

More efficient to bring in pages that reside
contiguously on the disk
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Placement Policy
Determines where in real memory a
process piece is to reside
Important in a segmentation system
Paging or combined paging with
segmentation hardware performs address
translation

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Replacement Policy
Placement Policy
Which page is replaced?
Page removed should be the page least
likely to be referenced in the near future
Most policies predict the future behavior on
the basis of past behavior

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Replacement Policy
Frame Locking

If frame is locked, it may not be replaced

Kernel of the operating system
Control structures
I/O buffers
Associate a lock bit with each frame

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Basic Replacement
Algorithms
Optimal policy
Selects for replacement that page for which
the time to the next reference is the longest
Impossible to have perfect knowledge of
future events

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Basic Replacement
Algorithms
Least Recently Used (LRU)
Replaces the page that has not been
referenced for the longest time
By the principle of locality, this should be
the page least likely to be referenced in the
near future
Each page could be tagged with the time of
last reference. This would require a great
deal of overhead.
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Basic Replacement
Algorithms
First-in, first-out (FIFO)
Treats page frames allocated to a process as
a circular buffer
Pages are removed in round-robin style
Simplest replacement policy to implement
Page that has been in memory the longest is
replaced
These pages may be needed again very soon
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Basic Replacement
Algorithms
Clock Policy
Additional bit called a use bit
When a page is first loaded in memory, the use bit
is set to 1
When the page is referenced, the use bit is set to 1
When it is time to replace a page, the first frame
encountered with the use bit set to 0 is replaced.
During the search for replacement, each use bit set
to 1 is changed to 0

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Comparison of Placement
Algorithms

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Basic Replacement
Algorithms
Page Buffering
Replaced page is added to one of two lists
Free page list if page has not been modified
Modified page list

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Resident Set Size

Fixed-allocation
Gives a process a fixed number of pages
within which to execute
When a page fault occurs, one of the pages
of that process must be replaced

Variable-allocation
Number of pages allocated to a process
varies over the lifetime of the process
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Fixed Allocation, Local Scope

Decide ahead of time the amount of
allocation to give a process
If allocation is too small, there will be a
high page fault rate
If allocation is too large there will be too
few programs in main memory

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Variable Allocation,
Global Scope
Easiest to implement
Adopted by many operating systems
Operating system keeps list of free
frames
Free frame is added to resident set of
process when a page fault occurs
If no free frame, replaces one from
another process
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Variable Allocation,
Local Scope
When new process added, allocate
number of page frames based on
application type, program request, or
other criteria
When page fault occurs, select page
from among the resident set of the
process that suffers the fault
Reevaluate allocation from time to time
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Cleaning Policy
Demand cleaning
A page is written out only when it has been
selected for replacement

Precleaning
Pages are written out in batches

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Cleaning Policy
Best approach uses page buffering
Replaced pages are placed in two lists
Modified and unmodified

Pages in the modified list are periodically

written out in batches
Pages in the unmodified list are either
reclaimed if referenced again or lost when
its frame is assigned to another page

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Load Control
Determines the number of processes that
will be resident in main memory
Too few processes, many occasions
when all processes will be blocked and
much time will be spent in swapping
Too many processes will lead to
thrashing

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Multiprogramming

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Process Suspension
Lowest priority process
Faulting process
This process does not have its working set
in main memory so it will be blocked
anyway

Last process activated

This process is least likely to have its
working set resident
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Process Suspension
Process with smallest resident set
This process requires the least future effort
to reload

Largest process
Obtains the most free frames

Process with the largest remaining

execution window

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UNIX and Solaris Memory

Management
Paging System

Page table
Disk block descriptor
Page frame data table
Swap-use table

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UNIX and Solaris Memory

Management
Page Replacement
Refinement of the clock policy

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Kernel Memory Allocator

Lazy buddy system

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Linux Memory Management

Page directory
Page middle directory
Page table

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Windows Memory
Management
Paging
Available
Reserved
Committed

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