Memory Management in Operating System

1. Virtual Memory
Dr. G. Jasmine Beulah
Kristu Jayanti College, Bengaluru

2. 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
 Virtual memory can be implemented via:
 Demand paging
 Demand segmentation

3. Virtual Memory That is Larger Than
Physical Memory

4. Demand Paging
 Bring a page into memory only when it is needed
 Less I/O needed
 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

5. Transfer of a Paged Memory to
Contiguous Disk Space

6. Valid-Invalid Bit
 With each page table entry a valid–invalid bit is associated
(v  in-memory, i  not-in-memory)
 Initially valid–invalid bit is set to i on all entries
 Example of a page table snapshot:
 During address translation, if valid–invalid bit in page table entry
is I  page fault
….
v
v
v
v
i
i
i
Frame # valid-invalid bit
page table

7. Page Table When Some Pages Are
Not in Main Memory

8. 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
4. Reset tables
5. Set validation bit = v
6. Restart the instruction that caused the page fault

9. Steps in Handling a Page Fault

10. Performance of Demand Paging
 Page Fault Rate 0  p  1.0
 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 time(page fault overhead
+ swap page out
+ swap page in
+ restart overhead
)

11. What happens if there is no free frame?
 Page replacement – find some page in memory, but not
really in use, swap it out
 algorithm
 performance – want an algorithm which will result in
minimum number of page faults
 Same page may be brought into memory several times

12. 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

13. Need For Page Replacement

14. 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
3. Bring the desired page into the (newly) free frame; update the page
and frame tables
4. Restart the process

15. Page Replacement

16. 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
1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 5, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

17. First-In-First-Out (FIFO) Algorithm
 Reference string: 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 5, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
 3 frames (3 pages can be in memory at a time per process)
 4 frames
 Belady’s Anomaly: more frames  more page faults
1
2
3
1
2
3
4
1
2
5
3
4
9 page faults
1
2
3
1
2
3
5
1
2
4
5 10 page faults
4
4 3

18. FIFO Page Replacement

19. Optimal Page Replacement
 Basic idea
 replace the page that will not be referenced for the longest time
 This gives the lowest possible fault rate
 Impossible to implement
 Does provide a good measure for other techniques

20. Optimal Algorithm
 Replace page that will not be used for longest period of time
 4 frames example
1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 5, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
 How do you know this?
 Used for measuring how well your algorithm performs
1
2
3
4
6 page faults
4 5

21. Optimal Page Replacement

22.  Page Hit=9
 Page fault= 9
 Hit Ratio= Number of page fault /No of references= 9/16= 50%
page fault ratio= 9/18=50%

23. LRU Page Replacement

24. Basic idea
replace the page in memory that has not been accessed
for the longest time
Optimal policy looking back in time
as opposed to forward in time
fortunately, programs tend to follow similar behavior

25. LRU Algorithm (Cont.)
 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
 No search for replacement

26.  Page Hit = 3
 Page fault = 12

27. LRU
 major solutions
 counters
 hardware clock “ticks” on every memory reference
 the page referenced is marked with this “time”
 the page with the smallest “time” value is replaced
 stack
 keep a stack of references
 on every reference to a page, move it to top of stack
 page at bottom of stack is next one to be replaced

28. LRU
 Stack Algorithm ( Class of page replacement algorithms)
 Optimal and LRU – stack algorithm
 No Belady anomaly
 Stack algorithm is an algorithm for which it can be shown that the set
of pages in memory for n frames is always a subset of set of pages that
would be in memory with n+1 frames

29. LRU Approximation page Replacement
 Hardware systems doesn’t support LRU
 Reference Bit for a page set by hardware
 Reference bits are associated with entry of
page table
 Additional Reference bits Algorithm
(reference bits are added)
 Second chance Algorithm – FIFO ,circular
queue – clock algorithm


30. Counting Algorithms
 Keep a counter of the number of references that have been made to
each page
 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

31. Allocation of frames
 The number of frames allocated must not exceed the total number of
frames available.
 At least minimum number of frames must be allocated.
 As the number of frames allocated to each process decreases, number
of page faults increases.
Frame allocation:
 Equal allocation: divide m frames among n processes, left out frames
can be used as buffer pool.
 Proportional allocation: total frames are proportionally split among n
processes depending on their requirement
 Ai=si/S*m and S=∑si
,where size of virtual memory of process pi is si, m is total number of
frames,ai is the number of frames allocated to process pi

32. 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
 Local replacement – each process selects from only its own set of
allocated frames

33. Thrashing
 If a process does not have “enough” pages, the page-fault rate is
very high(high paging activity). This leads to:
 low CPU utilization
 operating system thinks 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
 Effect of thrashing can be reduced by local replacement algorithm.

34. Thrashing (Cont.)

35.  Locality model
 Process migrates from one locality to another, there are two
types of locality
 Spatial locality : Once memory is referenced, it is highly
possible that nearby locations will be referenced.
 Temporal locality: memory locations referenced recently are
likely to be referenced again.
 Localities may overlap

36. Working set model
 Set of pages the process is currently using is called its working set.
 If the page is not used then it is dropped from its working set after certain time
(∆)
 The working set accuracy depends on the value of (∆)
If (∆) is too small, it does not cover entire locality.
If (∆) is too large, it could overlap several localities.
 Usage of working set model
• OS allocates enough number of frames to working set of each process.
• If extra frames are available, another process can be started.
• If sum of working set size exceeds the total number of frames available, the OS
selects and suspends process.
• Suspended process is restarted later.
Advantages:
Prevents thrashing, optimizes CPU utilization.

37. Page fault frequency(PFF)
 Main reason for thrashing is high PFF
 Upper and lower bound on the desired page fault rate must be
established.
 If page fault rate is above upper bound then another frame is allocated
to the process.
 If page fault rate is less than lower bound, frame is taken away from
process.
 If page fault rate increases and there are no free frames then process
must be suspended.

38. Demand segmentation
 Memory is allocated in segments instead of pages.
 Each segment has segment descriptor which keeps track of segment
size
 Segment descriptor consist of valid bit which indicate if the segment is
in memory or not.
 If the segment is not in memory, trap is generated to OS segment fault
occurs,OS the swaps required segment.
 Accesses bit is set when segment is either read or written.