Chapter 8: Main Memory

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne

 Objectives

 To provide a detailed description of various

ways of organizing memory hardware

 To discuss various memory-management

techniques, including paging and segmentation

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 8.2 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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

 Further, 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

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 8.3 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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)

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 8.4 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Multistep Processing of a User Program

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 8.5 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 8.6 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Memory-Management Unit (MMU)
 Hardware device that at run time maps virtual to
physical address
 To start, consider simple scheme where the value
in the relocation register is added to every address
generated by a user process at the time it is sent to
memory
 Base register now called relocation register
 MS-DOS on Intel 80x86 used 4 relocation
registers
 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

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 8.7 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Dynamic relocation using a relocation register

 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
require

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 8.8 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 8.9 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 8.10 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Schematic View of Swapping

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 8.11 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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()

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 8.12 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 8.13 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 8.14 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 8.15 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Hardware Support for Relocation and Limit Registers

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 8.16 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Multiple-partition allocation
 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)

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 8.17 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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 are better than worst-fit in terms of
speed and storage utilization

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 8.18 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 8.19 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Segmentation
 Memory-management scheme that supports user view of
memory
 A program is a collection of segments
 A segment is a logical unit such as:
main program
procedure
function
method
object
local variables, global variables
common block
stack
symbol table
arrays

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 8.20 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 User’s View of a Program

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 8.21 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Logical View of Segmentation

4
1

3 2
4

user space physical memory space

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 8.22 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Segmentation Architecture
 Logical address consists of a two tuple:
<segment-number, offset>,

 Segment table – maps two-dimensional physical

addresses; each table entry has:
 base – contains the starting physical address
where the segments reside in memory
 limit – specifies the length of the segment

 Segment-table base register (STBR) points to the

segment table’s location in memory

 Segment-table length register (STLR) indicates

number of segments used by a program;
segment number s is legal if s < STLR

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 8.23 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Segmentation Architecture (Cont.)
 Protection
 With each entry in segment table associate:
 validation bit = 0  illegal segment
 read/write/execute privileges
 Protection bits associated with segments; code
sharing occurs at segment level
 Since segments vary in length, memory
allocation is a dynamic storage-allocation
problem
 A segmentation example is shown in the
following diagram

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 8.24 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Segmentation Hardware

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 8.25 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 8.26 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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 page
unitnumber page offset
p d
m -n n

 For given logical address space 2m and page size 2n

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 8.27 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Paging Hardware

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 8.28 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Paging Model of Logical and Physical Memory

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 8.29 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Paging Example

n=2 and m=4 32-byte memory and 4-byte pages

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 8.30 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Paging (Cont.)
 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
 Process view and physical memory now very different
 By implementation process can only access its own memory

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 8.31 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Free Frames

Before allocation After allocation

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 8.32 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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 associative memory or translation
look-aside buffers (TLBs)

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 8.33 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Implementation of Page Table (Cont.)
 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

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 8.34 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Associative Memory

 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

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 8.35 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Paging Hardware With TLB

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 8.36 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Effective Access Time
 Associative Lookup =  time unit
 Can be < 10% of memory access time
 Hit ratio = 
 Hit ratio – percentage of times that a page number is
found in the associative registers; ratio related to
number of associative registers
 Consider  = 80%,  = 20ns for TLB search, 100ns for
memory access
 Effective Access Time (EAT)
EAT = (1 + )  + (2 + )(1 – )
=2+–
 Consider  = 80%,  = 20ns for TLB search, 100ns for
memory access
 EAT = 0.80 x 100 + 0.20 x 200 = 120ns
 Consider more realistic hit ratio ->  = 99%,  = 20ns for
TLB search, 100ns for memory access
 EAT = 0.99 x 100 + 0.01 x 200 = 101ns

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 8.37 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 8.38 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Valid (v) or Invalid (i) Bit In A Page Table

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 8.39 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 End of Chapter 8

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne