Chapter 9: Virtual Memory

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 8th Edition Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Chapter 9: Virtual Memory
 Background
 Demand Paging
 Copy-on-Write
 Page Replacement
 Allocation of Frames
 Thrashing
 Memory-Mapped Files
 Allocating Kernel Memory
 Other Considerations
 Operating-System
Examples

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 8th Edition 9.2 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Objectives
 To describe the benefits of a virtual memory system

 To explain the concepts of demand paging, page-replacement algorithms, and allocation of

page frames

 To discuss the principle of the working-set model

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 8th Edition 9.3 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Background
 Code needs to be in memory to execute, but entire program
rarely used
 Error code, unusual routines, large data structures
 Entire program code not needed at same time
 Consider ability to execute partially-loaded program
 Program no longer constrained by limits of physical
memory
 Program and programs could be larger than physical
memory

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 8th Edition 9.4 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Background
 Virtual memory – separation of user logical memory from physical memory
 Only part of the program needs to be in memory for execution
 Logical address space can therefore be much larger than physical
address space
 Allows address spaces to be shared by several processes
 Allows for more efficient process creation
 More programs running concurrently
 Less I/O needed to load or swap processes

 Virtual memory can be implemented via:

 Demand paging
 Demand segmentation

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 8th Edition 9.5 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Virtual Memory

What is Virtual Memory?

Virtual memory is a memory management technique that allows

execution of processes that may not be completely loaded into
physical memory (RAM).

Purpose:
To give an illusion of a very large main memory.
Enables more programs to run concurrently.
Allows programs to use more memory than physically available.
 Virtual Memory That is
Larger Than Physical Memory

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 8th Edition 9.7 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
Key Concepts of Virtual Memory

Logical Address vs Physical Address

• Logical (or virtual) address: Generated by the CPU.
• Physical address: Actual location in RAM.
• Memory Management Unit (MMU) translates logical to physical address.

Paging in Virtual Memory

Virtual memory is usually implemented using paging.
The program is divided into pages, and RAM into frames.
Only the required pages are loaded, rest stay on disk (usually in swap
space).
 Virtual-address Space

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 8th Edition 9.9 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Virtual Address Space
 Enables sparse address spaces with holes left for growth, dynamically linked
libraries, etc
 System libraries shared via mapping into virtual address space
 Shared memory by mapping pages read-write into virtual address space
 Pages can be shared during fork(), speeding process creation

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 8th Edition 9.10 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Shared Library Using Virtual Memory

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 8th Edition 9.11 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Demand Paging
 Could bring entire process into memory at load time
 Or bring a page into memory only when it is needed
 Less I/O needed, no unnecessary I/O
 Less memory needed
 Faster response
 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

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 8th Edition 9.12 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
Demand Paging

Demand Paging is a memory management scheme in which pages of a process are

not loaded into memory until they are needed during execution.

It is a lazy loading technique — only the required pages are brought into main
memory, reducing memory usage.

How It Works
1.A page is referenced during execution.
2.If the page is not in memory, a page fault occurs.
3.The OS loads the required page from secondary storage (disk) into
memory.
4.The instruction is restarted.
Pure Demand Paging

In some cases when initially no pages are loaded into the memory,
pages in such cases are only loaded when are demanded by the
process by generating page faults. I
t is then referred to as Pure Demand Paging
 Transfer of a Paged Memory to
Contiguous Disk Space

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 8th Edition 9.15 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Valid-Invalid Bit
 With each page table entry a valid–invalid bit is
associated
(v  in-memory – memory resident, i  not-in-memory)
 Initially valid–invalid bit is set to i on all entries
 Example of a page table snapshot:

Frame # vali
d -invalid bit
v
v
v
v
i

….

i
i
page table
 During address translation, if valid–invalid bit in page
table entry
is I  page fault

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 8th Edition 9.16 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Page Table When Some Pages
Are Not in Main Memory

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 8th Edition 9.17 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Page Fault
 If there is a reference to a page, first reference to that page will trap to
operating system:
page fault
1. Operating system looks at another table to decide:
 Invalid reference  abort
 Just not in memory
2. Get empty frame
3. Swap page into frame via scheduled disk operation
4. Reset tables to indicate page now in memory
Set validation bit = v
5. Restart the instruction that caused the page fault

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 8th Edition 9.18 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
Page Fault

Occurs when:

A page referenced by a process is not in main

memory.

It triggers the Operating System to fetch the missing

page from secondary storage
Thrashing

When a system spends more time

swapping pages in and out of memory
than executing instructions.

Causes:
Too many processes in memory.
Insufficient RAM.
Poor page replacement.
 Aspects of Demand Paging
 Extreme case – start process with no pages in memory
 OS sets instruction pointer to first instruction of process, non-memory-resident -
> page fault
 And for every other process pages on first access
 Pure demand paging
 Actually, a given instruction could access multiple pages -> multiple page faults
 Pain decreased because of locality of reference
 Hardware support needed for demand paging
 Page table with valid / invalid bit
 Secondary memory (swap device with swap space)
 Instruction restart

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 8th Edition 9.21 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Instruction Restart
 Consider an instruction that could access several different
locations
 block move

 auto increment/decrement location

 Restart the whole operation?

 What if source and

destination overlap?

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 8th Edition 9.22 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Steps in Handling a Page Fault

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 8th Edition 9.23 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Performance of Demand Paging
 Stages in Demand Paging
1. Trap to the operating system
2. Save the user registers and process state
3. Determine that the interrupt was a page fault
4. Check that the page reference was legal and determine the location of the page on
the disk
5. Issue a read from the disk to a free frame:
1. Wait in a queue for this device until the read request is serviced
2. Wait for the device seek and/or latency time
3. Begin the transfer of the page to a free frame
6. While waiting, allocate the CPU to some other user
7. Receive an interrupt from the disk I/O subsystem (I/O completed)
8. Save the registers and process state for the other user
9. Determine that the interrupt was from the disk
10. Correct the page table and other tables to show page is now in memory
11. Wait for the CPU to be allocated to this process again
12. Restore the user registers, process state, and new page table, and then resume
the interrupted
instruction
Operating System Concepts Essentials – 8 th Edition 9.24 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Performance of Demand Paging (Cont.)
 Page Fault Rate 0  p  1
 if p = 0 no page faults
 if p = 1, every reference is a fault

 Effective Access Time (EAT)

EAT = (1 – p) x memory access
+ p (page fault
overhead
+ swap page
out
+ swap page in
+ restart
overhead
)

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 8th Edition 9.25 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Demand Paging Example
 Memory access time = 200 nanoseconds
 Average page-fault service time = 8 milliseconds

 EAT = (1 – p) x 200 + p (8 milliseconds)

= (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!!
 If want performance degradation < 10
percent
 220 > 200 + 7,999,800 x p
20 > 7,999,800 x p
 p < .0000025
 < one page fault in every 400,000
memory accesses

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 8th Edition 9.26 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Demand Paging Optimizations
 Copy entire process image to swap space at process load time
 Then page in and out of swap space
 Used in older BSD Unix

 Demand page in from program binary on disk, but discard rather than paging out when
freeing frame
 Used in Solaris and current BSD

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 8th Edition 9.27 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Copy-on-Write
 Copy-on-Write (COW) allows both parent and child processes to initially share the same
pages in
memory
 If either process modifies a shared page, only then is the page copied
 COW allows more efficient process creation as only modified pages are copied
 In general, free pages are allocated from a pool of zero-fill-on-demand pages
 Why zero-out a page before allocating it?
 vfork() variation on fork() system call has parent suspend and child using copy-on-
write address space of parent
 Designed to have child call exec()
 Very efficient

Copy-on-Write (COW) = Optimization for memory sharing.

Saves memory and time by delaying copying until absolutely necessary.

Commonly used in Linux and other modern OS implementations to improve

process creation performance.

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 8th Edition 9.28 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
What is Copy-on-Write?

COW allows parent and child processes to initially share the

same memory pages after a fork() system call.

The memory is not duplicated immediately; instead, both

processes use the same pages until one modifies a page.

Only when a page is written to (modified) by either process, a

copy is made specifically for that process.

This avoids unnecessary duplication of memory.

Benefits of COW:

Efficient memory usage: Reduces memory

consumption because unmodified pages are shared.

Faster process creation: Since most memory doesn't

need to be copied right away, creating child processes is
quicker.
Free Page Allocation:

Free pages used when duplication is needed are

typically taken from a pool of zero-fill-on-
demand pages.

 These are pages filled with zeroes, allocated

only when actually needed.
 Avoids wasting time zeroing out a page that
may never be used.
vfork() is a special version of fork():
 Parent process is suspended until the child either calls exec()
or exits.
 Child shares the exact address space of the parent temporarily
(with COW).

 This is more efficient than fork() in cases where the child only
wants to run a new program (exec()).
 Before Process 1 Modifies Page C

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 8th Edition 9.33 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 After Process 1 Modifies Page C

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 8th Edition 9.34 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
After modification, the following steps occur:
1.Write attempt on shared page (Page C) by process₁ triggers Copy-on-Write:
The operating system detects that Page C is shared between process₁ and process₂.
Because COW is in effect, a private copy of Page C is created only for process₁.
2.New physical page is allocated:
A new page labeled “Copy of page C” is created.
The contents of the original Page C are copied into this new page.
3.Page table update for process₁:
process₁’ page table is modified to point to the new private copy.
Now process₁ can safely modify the copy without affecting process₂.
4.process₂ still points to original Page C:
Since process₂ has not modified Page C, it continues to share the original.
 What Happens if There is no Free Frame?

 Used up by process pages

 Also in demand from the kernel, I/O buffers, etc
 How much to allocate to each?

 Page replacement – find some page in memory, but not really in use, page it
out
 Algorithm – terminate? swap out? replace the page?
 Performance – want an algorithm which will result in minimum number of
page faults

 Same page may be brought into memory several times

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 8th Edition 9.36 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Page Replacement
 Prevent over-allocation of memory by modifying page-fault service routine to include page
replacement

 Use modify (dirty) bit to reduce overhead of page transfers – only modified pages are
written to disk

 Page replacement completes separation between logical memory and physical memory –
large virtual memory can be provided on a smaller physical memory

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 8th Edition 9.37 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Need For Page Replacement

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 8th Edition 9.38 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Basic Page Replacement

1. Find the location of the desired page on disk

2. Find a free frame:

- If there is a free frame, use it
- If there is no free frame, use a page replacement algorithm to select a
victim frame
- Write victim frame to disk if dirty

3. Bring the desired page into the (newly) free frame; update the page and
frame tables

4.Continue the process by restarting the instruction that

caused the trap Note now potentially 2 page transfers for page

fault – increasing EAT

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 8th Edition 9.39 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Page Replacement

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 8th Edition 9.40 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Page and Frame Replacement Algorithms

 Frame-allocation algorithm determines

 How many frames to give each process
 Which frames to replace
 Page-replacement algorithm
 Want lowest page-fault rate on both first access and re-access

 Evaluate algorithm by running it on a particular string of memory references

(reference string) and
computing the number of page faults on that string
 String is just page numbers, not full addresses
 Repeated access to the same page does not cause a page fault
 In all our examples, the reference string is
7,0,1,2,0,3,0,4,2,3,0,3,0,3,2,1,2,0,1,7,0,1

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 8th Edition 9.41 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Graph of Page Faults Versus
The Number of Frames

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 8th Edition 9.42 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 First-In-First-Out (FIFO) Algorithm
 Reference string:
7,0,1,2,0,3,0,4,2,3,0,3,0,3,2,1,2,0,1,7,0,1
 3 frames (3 pages can be in memory at a time per
process)

1 7 2 4 0
7
2 0 3 2 1 15 page
0 faults
3 1 0 3 2
1

 Can vary by reference string: consider

1,2,3,4,1,2,5,1,2,3,4,5
 Adding more frames can cause more page
faults!
 Belady’s Anomaly

 How to track ages of

pages?
 Just use a FIFO queue

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 8th Edition 9.43 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 FIFO Page Replacement

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 8th Edition 9.44 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 FIFO Illustrating Belady’s Anomaly

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 8th Edition 9.45 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Optimal Algorithm
 Replace page that will not be used for longest period
of time
 9 is optimal for the example on the next slide

 How do you know this?

 Can’t read the future

 Used for measuring how well your algorithm

performs

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 8th Edition 9.46 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Optimal Page Replacement

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 8th Edition 9.47 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Least Recently Used (LRU) Algorithm

 Use past knowledge rather than future

 Replace page that has not been used in the most
amount of time
 Associate time of last use with each page

 12 faults – better than FIFO but worse

than OPT
 Generally good algorithm and frequently
used
 But how to implement?

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 8th Edition 9.48 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 LRU Algorithm (Cont.)
 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 find smallest value
 Search through table needed
 Stack implementation
 Keep a stack of page numbers in a double link form:
 Page referenced:
 move it to the top
 requires 6 pointers to be changed
 But each update more expensive
 No search for replacement
 LRU and OPT are cases of stack algorithms that don’t have Belady’s Anomaly

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 8th Edition 9.49 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Use Of A Stack to Record The
Most Recent Page References

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 8th Edition 9.50 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 LRU Approximation Algorithms
 LRU needs special hardware and still slow
 Reference bit
 With each page associate a bit, initially = 0
 When page is referenced bit set to 1
 Replace any with reference bit = 0 (if one
exists)
 We do not know the order, however
 Second-chance algorithm
 Generally FIFO, plus hardware-provided
reference bit
 Clock replacement
 If page to be replaced has
 Reference bit = 0 -> replace it
 reference bit = 1 then:
– set reference bit 0, leave page in
memory
– replace next page, subject to same
rules

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 8th Edition 9.51 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Second-Chance (clock) Page-Replacement Algorithm

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 8th Edition 9.52 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Counting Algorithms
 Keep a counter of the number of references that have been made to each page
 Not common

 LFU Algorithm: replaces page with smallest count

 MFU Algorithm: based on the argument that the page with the smallest count was probably
just brought in and has yet to be used

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 8th Edition 9.53 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Page-Buffering Algorithms
 Keep a pool of free frames, always
 Then frame available when needed, not found at fault time
 Read page into free frame and select victim to evict and add to
free pool
 When convenient, evict victim
 Possibly, keep list of modified pages
 When backing store otherwise idle, write pages there and set to
non-dirty
 Possibly, keep free frame contents intact and note what is in them
 If referenced again before reused, no need to load contents again
from disk
 Generally useful to reduce penalty if wrong victim frame selected

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 8th Edition 9.54 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Applications and Page Replacement
 All of these algorithms have OS guessing about future page access
 Some applications have better knowledge – i.e. databases
 Memory intensive applications can cause double buffering
 OS keeps copy of page in memory as I/O buffer
 Application keeps page in memory for its own work
 Operating system can given direct access to the disk, getting out of the way of the
applications
 Raw disk mode
 Bypasses buffering, locking, etc

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 8th Edition 9.55 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Allocation of Frames

 Each process needs minimum number of frames

 Example: IBM 370 – 6 pages to handle SS MOVE
instruction:
 instruction is 6 bytes, might span 2 pages
 2 pages to handle from
 2 pages to handle to
 Maximum of course is total frames in the system
 Two major allocation schemes
 fixed allocation
 priority allocation
 Many variations

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 8th Edition 9.56 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Fixed Allocation
 Equal allocation – For example, if there are 100 frames (after allocating frames for
the OS) and 5 processes, give each process 20 frames
 Keep some as free frame buffer pool

 Proportional allocation – Allocate according to the size of process

 Dynamic as degree of multiprogramming, process sizes change

si  size of m
64
ss1  10
2 
process pi S   s i 127
10
a1  137  64 
m  total number si 5
ofi 
a allocation for
frames  127
a 2 137  64 
S m 59
pi 

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 8th Edition 9.57 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Priority Allocation
 Use a proportional allocation scheme using priorities rather than size

 If process Pi generates a page fault,

 select for replacement one of its frames
 select for replacement a frame from a process with lower
priority number

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 8th Edition 9.58 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Global vs. Local Allocation
 Global replacement – process selects a replacement frame from the set of all frames; one
process can take a frame from another
 But then process execution time can vary greatly
 But greater throughput so more common

 Local replacement – each process selects from only its own set of allocated frames
 More consistent per-process performance
 But possibly underutilized memory

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 8th Edition 9.59 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Non-Uniform Memory Access
 So far all memory accessed equally
 Many systems are NUMA – speed of access to memory varies
 Consider system boards containing CPUs and memory, interconnected over a system bus
 Optimal performance comes from allocating memory “close to” the CPU on which the thread is
scheduled
 And modifying the scheduler to schedule the thread on the same system board when
possible
 Solved by Solaris by creating lgroups
 Structure to track CPU / Memory low latency groups
 Used my schedule and pager
 When possible schedule all threads of a process and allocate all memory for that
process within the lgroup

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 8th Edition 9.60 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Thrashing

 If a process does not have “enough” pages, the page-fault rate is very high
 Page fault to get page
 Replace existing frame
 But quickly need replaced frame back
 This leads to:
 Low CPU utilization
 Operating system thinking that it needs to increase the degree of
multiprogramming
 Another process added to the system

 Thrashing  a process is busy swapping pages in and out

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 8th Edition 9.61 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Thrashing (Cont.)

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 8th Edition 9.62 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Demand Paging and Thrashing

 Why does demand paging work?

Locality model
 Process migrates from one locality to another
 Localities may overlap

 Why does thrashing occur?

 size of locality > total memory size
 Limit effects by using local or priority page
replacement

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 8th Edition 9.63 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Locality In A Memory-Reference Pattern

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 8th Edition 9.64 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Working-Set Model
   working-set window  a fixed number of page references
Example: 10,000 instructions

 WSSi (working set of Process Pi) =

total number of pages referenced in the most recent  (varies
in time)
 if  too small will not encompass entire locality
 if  too large will encompass several localities
 if  =   will encompass entire program

 D =  WSSi  total demand frames

 Approximation of locality

 if D > m  Thrashing

 Policy if D > m, then suspend or swap out one of the

processes

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 8th Edition 9.65 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Working-set model

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 8th Edition 9.66 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Keeping Track of the Working Set
 Approximate with interval timer + a reference bit

 Example:  = 10,000
 Timer interrupts after every 5000 time units
 Keep in memory 2 bits for each page
 Whenever a timer interrupts copy and sets the values of all
reference bits to 0
 If one of the bits in memory = 1  page in working set

 Why is this not completely accurate?

 Improvement = 10 bits and interrupt every 1000 time units

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 8th Edition 9.67 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Page-Fault Frequency
 More direct approach than WSS
 Establish “acceptable” page-fault frequency rate and use local
replacement policy
 If actual rate too low, process loses frame
 If actual rate too high, process gains frame

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 8th Edition 9.68 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Working Sets and Page Fault Rates

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 8th Edition 9.69 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Memory-Mapped Files
 Memory-mapped file I/O allows file I/O to be treated as routine memory access by mapping a
disk block to
a page in memory
 A file is initially read using demand paging
 A page-sized portion of the file is read from the file system into a physical page
 Subsequent reads/writes to/from the file are treated as ordinary memory accesses
 Simplifies and speeds file access by driving file I/O through memory rather than read() and
write()
system calls
 Also allows several processes to map the same file allowing the pages in memory to be
shared
 But when does written data make it to disk?
 Periodically and / or at file close() time
 For example, when the pager scans for dirty pages

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 8th Edition 9.70 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Memory-Mapped File Technique for all I/O
 Some OSes uses memory mapped files for standard I/O
 Process can explicitly request memory mapping a file via mmap() system call
 Now file mapped into process address space
 For standard I/O (open(), read(), write(), close()), mmap anyway
 But map file into kernel address space
 Process still does read() and write()
 Copies data to and from kernel space and user space
 Uses efficient memory management subsystem
 Avoids needing separate subsystem
 COW can be used for read/write non-shared pages
 Memory mapped files can be used for shared memory (although again via separate
system calls)

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 8th Edition 9.71 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Memory Mapped Files

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 8th Edition 9.72 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Memory-Mapped Shared Memory
in Windows

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 8th Edition 9.73 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Allocating Kernel Memory
 Treated differently from user memory

 Often allocated from a free-memory pool

 Kernel requests memory for structures of
varying sizes
 Some kernel memory needs to be contiguous
 I.e. for device I/O

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 8th Edition 9.74 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Buddy System
 Allocates memory from fixed-size segment consisting of physically-contiguous pages
 Memory allocated using power-of-2 allocator
 Satisfies requests in units sized as power of 2
 Request rounded up to next highest power of 2
 When smaller allocation needed than is available, current chunk split into two buddies
of next-lower
power of 2
 Continue until appropriate sized chunk available
 For example, assume 256KB chunk available, kernel requests 21KB
 Split into AL and Ar of 128KB each
 One further divided into BL and BR of 64KB
– One further into CL and CR of 32KB each – one used to satisfy
request
 Advantage – quickly coalesce unused chunks into larger chunk
 Disadvantage - fragmentation

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 8th Edition 9.75 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Buddy System Allocator

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 8th Edition 9.76 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Slab Allocator
 Alternate strategy

 Slab is one or more physically contiguous pages

 Cache consists of one or more slabs

 Single cache for each unique kernel data structure

 Each cache filled with objects – instantiations of the data
structure

 When cache created, filled with objects marked as free

 When structures stored, objects marked as used

 If slab is full of used objects, next object allocated from empty

slab
 If no empty slabs, new slab allocated

 Benefits include no fragmentation, fast memory request

satisfaction

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 8th Edition 9.77 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Slab Allocation

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 8th Edition 9.78 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Other Considerations -- Prepaging

 Prepaging
 To reduce the large number of page faults that occurs at process
startup
 Prepage all or some of the pages a process will need, before they are
referenced
 But if prepaged pages are unused, I/O and memory was wasted
 Assume s pages are prepaged and α of the pages is used
 Is cost of s * α save pages faults > or < than the cost
of prepaging
s * (1- α) unnecessary pages?
 α near zero  prepaging loses

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 8th Edition 9.79 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Other Issues – Page Size
 Sometimes OS designers have a choice
 Especially if running on custom-built CPU
 Page size selection must take into consideration:
 Fragmentation
 Page table size
 Resolution
 I/O overhead
 Number of page faults
 Locality
 TLB size and effectiveness
 Always power of 2, usually in the range 212 (4,096 bytes) to 222
(4,194,304 bytes)
 On average, growing over time

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 8th Edition 9.80 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Other Issues – TLB Reach

 TLB Reach - The amount of memory accessible from the TLB

 TLB Reach = (TLB Size) X (Page Size)

 Ideally, the working set of each process is stored in the TLB

 Otherwise there is a high degree of page faults

 Increase the Page Size

 This may lead to an increase in fragmentation as not all applications require a
large page size

 Provide Multiple Page Sizes

 This allows applications that require larger page sizes the opportunity to use
them without an
increase in fragmentation

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 8th Edition 9.81 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Other Issues – Program Structure
 Program structure
 Int[128,128] data;
 Each row is stored in one page
 Program 1
for (j = 0; j <128; j++)
for (i = 0; i < 128; i++)
data[i,j] = 0;

128 x 128 = 16,384 page faults

 Program 2
for (i = 0; i < 128; i++)
for (j = 0; j < 128; j++)
data[i,j] = 0;

128 page faults

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 8th Edition 9.82 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Other Issues – I/O interlock

 I/O Interlock – Pages must sometimes be locked into memory

 Consider I/O - Pages that are used for copying a file from a device must be locked from
being selected for eviction by a page replacement algorithm

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 8th Edition 9.83 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Reason Why Frames Used For
I/O Must Be In Memory

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 8th Edition 9.84 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Operating System Examples

 Windows
XP

 Solaris

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 8th Edition 9.85 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Windows XP
 Uses demand paging with clustering. Clustering brings in pages surrounding the faulting
page

 Processes are assigned working set minimum and working set maximum

 Working set minimum is the minimum number of pages the process is guaranteed to have in
memory

 A process may be assigned as many pages up to its working set maximum

 When the amount of free memory in the system falls below a threshold, automatic working
set trimming
is performed to restore the amount of free memory

 Working set trimming removes pages from processes that have pages in excess of their
working set minimum

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 8th Edition 9.86 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Solaris
 Maintains a list of free pages to assign faulting processes

 Lotsfree – threshold parameter (amount of free memory) to begin paging

 Desfree – threshold parameter to increasing paging

 Minfree – threshold parameter to being swapping

 Paging is performed by pageout process

 Pageout scans pages using modified clock algorithm

 Scanrate is the rate at which pages are scanned. This ranges from slowscan to
fastscan

 Pageout is called more frequently depending upon the amount of free

memory available
 Priority paging gives priority to process code pages

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 8th Edition 9.87 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Solaris 2 Page Scanner

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 8th Edition 9.88 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 End of Chapter 8

Operating System Concepts Essentials – 8th Edition Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne