Main Memory Management

Memory Manager
• Responsible for:
– Allocating main memory to processes
– Retrieving and storing contents to and from main
memory when requested
– Effective sharing of main memory
– Minimizing memory access time
 Memory Management
• Uniprogramming systems divide
memory into OS area and user area
• In a multiprogramming system, user
memory is subdivided per process
• That memory needs to be allocated
efficiently to pack as many processes
into memory as possible
• Main memory and registers are the
only storage areas the CPU can
access directly
 Memory Management
Requirements
• Relocation
– Programmers do not know where
programs will be placed in memory when
executed
– While a program is executing, it may be
swapped to disk and returned to main
memory at a different location
(relocated)
– Memory references in program code must
be translated to physical memory
addresses
 Memory Management
Requirements
• Protection
– Processes should not be able to reference
memory locations in another process without
permission
– More importantly, processes should not access
the portion of memory where the OS is resident
– Since programs may be relocated, it is
impossible to check absolute addresses in
programs at compile time
– Must be checked at run-time
 Memory Management
Requirements
• Sharing
– Should be possible for several processes
to access the same portion of memory
– e.g., two instances of the same program
might share access to one copy of the
program code in memory
 Memory Management
Requirements
• Logical Organization
– Programs often composed as modules
that can be written and compiled
independently
– Different degrees of protection are given
to modules (read-only, execute-only)
– Share modules among processes
 Physical Organization
• How Does a Program Start Running? The flow of
information between main and secondary memory:
• Step I) OS (loader) copies a program from
permanent storage into RAM
• Step 2) CPU’s Program Counter is then set to the
starting address of the program and the program
begins execution
• Question? what if the program is too big? Memory
available for a program+data may be insufficient
• One solution: programmer breaks code into pieces
that fit into main memory (RAM )
 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
 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
Schematic View of Swapping
 Multiple-partition allocation

• Multiple-partition allocation
– Degree of multiprogramming limited by the number of
partitions
– 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 are
combined in Compaction
– Operating system maintains information about:
a) allocated partitions b) free partitions (hole)
Multiple-partition allocation
 Fixed
Partitioning
Placement Algorithm with Fixed Partitions

• Equal-size partitions
– arbitrary
• Unequal-size partitions
– Strategy 1: assign each process
to the smallest partition it will fit
in
• queue for each partition
• processes are assigned in such a way as to
minimize wasted memory within a partition

– Strategy 2: prefer available

partitions, even if they are too
big
 Dynamic Partitioning
• Partitions are of variable length and
number
• Process is allocated exactly as much
memory as required
• Eventually get holes in the memory.
This is called external fragmentation
• Must use compaction to shift
processes so they are contiguous and
all free memory is in one block
 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
• Next fit: begins to scan memory from the location of the last
placement and chooses the next available block that is large
enough
 Dynamic Partitioning Placement
Algorithms
• Operating system must decide how to
assign memory to processes
• Best-fit algorithm
– Chooses the block that is closest in size to
the request
– Worst performer overall
– Since smallest block is found for process,
the smallest amount of fragmentation is
left memory compaction must be done
more often
 Dynamic Partitioning
Placement Algorithms
• First-fit algorithm
– Usually the fastest and best
– May have many process loaded in the
front end of memory that must be
searched over when trying to find a free
block
 Dynamic Partitioning
Placement Algorithm
• Next-fit
– begin from location of last placement
– slightly worse than first-fit
– The largest block of memory gets broken
up into smaller blocks
– Compaction is required to obtain a large
block at the end of memory
 Research: Buddy System
• Entire space available is treated as a
single block of 2U
• If a request of size s such that 2U-1 < s
<= 2U, entire block is allocated
– Otherwise block is split into two equal
buddies
– Process continues until smallest block
greater than or equal to s is generated
 Fragmentation

• External Fragmentation – arises when free

memory is separated into small blocks and is
interspersed by allocated memory
• 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
 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