MEMORY

MANAGEMENT
 TOPICS COVERED
 Introduction
 Memory Management Techniques
 Contiguous Techniques
 Single Contiguous Memory Management
 Fixed Partitioning
 Variable Partitioning

 Non-Contiguous Techniques
 Paging
 Segmentation

 Page Replacement Algorithms

 INTRODUCTION
 Memory management is the functionality of an operating system which
handles or manages main memory(RAM) and moves processes back and forth
between main memory and disk during execution.
 It keeps track of each and every memory location
 It checks how much memory is to be allocated to processes
 It decides which process will get memory at what time
 It tracks whenever some memory gets freed or unallocated and
correspondingly it updates the status.
 MEMORY MANAGEMENT TECHNIQUES
 Memory Allocation Techniques are classified into two categories:
 Contiguous Techniques
 a method which allocates consecutive blocks of memory to a process

 Non-contiguous Techniques
 a method which allocates the memory space present in different locations to the
process as per it’s requirements
 SINGLE CONTIGUOUS
MEMORY ALLOCATION
 Simple allocation scheme
 No multiprogramming
 Entire available memory is allocated to a single
process
 Main memory is divided into 2 contiguous regions:
 One portion permanently allocated to OS
 Remaining portion of memory is allocated to single
user process
 Some part of memory gets wasted
 SINGLE CONTIGUOUS
MEMORY ALLOCATION
 Advantages:
 Fast access time
 Requires less memory
 Easy to implement and use

 Disadvantages:
 No multi user facility
 Memory is not fully utilised
 Processor is also not fully utilised
 User program is being limited to the size available in main memory
 FIXED PARTITIONING
 Number of partitions in memory are fixed but size of each partition may
or may not be same.
 As it is contiguous allocation, hence no spanning is allowed.
 Partition are made before execution or during system configure
 simplest technique used to put more than one processes in the main
memory
FIXED PARTIONING
 Advantages:
 Easy to implement
 Little OS overhead

 Disadvantages:
 Internal Fragmentation
 External Fragmentation
 Limited process size
 Limitation on Degree of
Multiprogramming
 INTERNAL FRAGMENTATION
 Internal fragmentation happens when
the memory is split into mounted-sized
blocks.
 Whenever process is requested for the
memory, the mounted-sized block is
allotted to it
 In the case where the memory allotted
to the process is somewhat larger than
the memory requested, then the
difference between allotted and
requested memory is called internal
fragmentation
 EXTERNAL FRAGMENTATION
 External fragmentation happens
when there’s a sufficient quantity of
area within the memory to satisfy
the memory request of a process.
 However, the process’s memory
request cannot be fulfilled because
the memory offered is in a non-
contiguous manner.
 VARIABLE PARTITIONING
 Initially main memory is empty and partitions are made during the run-
time according to process’s need instead of partitioning during system
configure
 The size of partition will be equal to incoming process
 Internal fragmentation can be avoided to ensure efficient utilisation of
memory
 Number of partitions are not fixed and depends on the number of incoming
process and Main Memory’s size
VARIABLE PARTITIONING
 Advantages of Variable
Partitioning –
 No Internal Fragmentation

 No restriction on Degree of
Multiprogramming

 No Limitation on the size of the

process
VARIABLE PARTITIONING
 Disadvantages of Variable
Partitioning –
 Difficult Implementation

 External Fragmentation
 NON CONTIGUOUS MEMORY MANAGEMENT
 In non-contiguous memory allocation, different parts of a process is allocated
different places in Main Memory
 Spanning is allowed
 In non-contiguous allocation, Operating system needs to maintain the table
for each process which contains the starting address of the each block
which is acquired by the process in memory space
 Two ways which allows non-contiguous way of memory allocation:
 Paging
 Segmentation
 PAGING
 Paging is a mechanism used to retrieve processes from the secondary
storage into the main memory in the form of pages.
 In this technique, each process is divided in the form of PAGES
 The main memory will also be divided in the form of FRAMES
 One page of the process is to be stored in one of the frames of the memory.
 Pages of the process are brought into the main memory only when they are
required otherwise they reside in the secondary storage.
 Considering the fact that the pages are mapped to the frames , PAGE SIZE
NEEDS TO BE AS SAME AS FRAME SIZE.
PAGING-EXAMPLE
 Main memory size 16 Kb
 Frame size is 1 KB
 Main memory will be divided into
16 frames of 1 KB each
 There are 4 processes in the system
that is P1, P2, P3 and P4 of 4 KB
each
 Each process is divided into pages
of 1 KB each
 WHY SEGMENTATION IS
REQUIRED
 Paging is more close to Operating system rather than the User.
 Operating system doesn't care about the User's view of the process. It may
divide the same function into different pages and those pages may or may
not be loaded at the same time into the memory.
 It is better to have segmentation which divides the process into the
segments. Each segment contain same type of functions such as main
function can be included in one segment and the library functions can be
included in the other segment
 SEGMENTATION
 Pages are physical in nature and Segments are logical divisions of a process
 Segments are variable in size
 Each program is divided into logical parts-SEGMENTS
 The details about each segment are stored in a table called as segment table
VIRTUAL MEMORY
 Virtual Memory is a storage scheme that provides user an illusion of having
a very big main memory. This is done by treating a part of secondary
memory as the main memory
 Instead of loading one big process in the main memory, the Operating
System loads the different parts of more than one process in the main
memory
 Virtual memory concept can be implemented using Paging, segmentation
or combined techniques
 Degree of multiprogramming will be increased and therefore, the CPU
utilization will also be increased
TERMS RELATED TO VIRTUAL MEMORY
 Page fault:
 A page fault is trap that occurs when the requested page is
not loaded into the memory
 When a program tries to access a chunk of memory that does
not exist in physical memory (main memory) causes a page
fault.
 Page replacement policy:
 Page replacement occurs due to page faults.
 Page replacement is referred to a scenario in which a page
from the main memory should be replaced by a page from
secondary memory
 The various page replacement algorithms like FIFO, Optimal
page replacement, LRU help the operating system to decide
which page to replace.
 FIFO
 FIFO algorithm is the simplest of all the page replacement
algorithms.
 In this, we maintain a queue of all the pages that are in the
memory currently.
 Whenever a page fault occurs, the operating system looks at
the front-end of the queue to know the page to be replaced by
the newly requested page.
 It also adds this newly requested page at the rear-end and
removes the oldest page from the front-end of the queue.
 FIFO-EXAMPLE
 Consider the page reference string as 3, 1, 2, 1, 6, 5, 1, 3 with 3-page
frames. Find the number of page faults:
LRU(LEAST RECENTLY USED)
 The least recently used page replacement algorithm keeps the
track of usage of pages over a period of time.
 This algorithm works on the basis of the principle of locality
of a reference which states that a program has a tendency to
access the same set of memory locations repetitively over a
short period of time. So pages that have been used heavily in
the past are most likely to be used heavily in the future also.
 In this algorithm, when a page fault occurs, then the page
that has not been used for the longest duration of time
is replaced by the newly requested page.
 LRU
 Let’s see the performance of the LRU on the same reference string of 3, 1,
2, 1, 6, 5, 1, 3 with 3-page frames:
 OPTIMAL
 Optimal page replacement is the best page replacement
algorithm as this algorithm results in the least number of page
faults.
 In this algorithm, the pages are replaced with the ones that
will not be used for the longest duration of time in the future.
In simple terms, the pages that will be referred farthest in the
future are replaced in this algorithm.
 OPTIMAL-ALGORITHM
 Let’s take the same page reference string 3, 1, 2, 1, 6, 5, 1, 3 with 3-page
frames :
EXAMPLES
FREE SPACE MANAGEMENT
TECHNIQUES
 Free space management is a critical aspect of operating systems as it
involves managing the available storage space on the hard disk or other
secondary storage devices.
 The operating system uses various techniques to manage free space and
optimize the use of storage devices
 The system keeps tracks of the free disk blocks for allocating space to files
when they are created.
 To reuse the space released from deleting the files, free space
management becomes crucial.
 BITMAP OR BIT VECTOR
 A Bitmap or Bit Vector is series or collection of bits where each bit
corresponds to a disk block.
 The bit can take two values: 0 and 1: 0 indicates that the block is free and
1 indicates an allocated​block.
 The given instance of disk blocks on the disk can be represented by a
bitmap of 16 bits as: 1111000111111001.
 Advantages:
 Simple to understand.
 Finding the first free block is efficient. It requires scanning the words (a
group of 8 bits) in a bitmap for a non-zero word. (A 0-valued word has all
bits 0). The first free block is then found by scanning for the first 1 bit in
the non-zero word.

 Disadvantages:
 For finding a free block, Operating System needs to iterate all the blocks
which is time consuming.
 The efficiency of this method reduces as the disk size increases.
 LINKED LIST
 In this approach, the free disk blocks are linked together i.e. a free block
contains a pointer to the next free block.
 The block number of the very first disk block is stored at a separate
location on disk and is also cached in memory.
 The last free block would contain a null pointer indicating the end of free
list.
 Advantages:
 The total available space is used efficiently using this method.
 Dynamic allocation in Linked List is easy, thus can add the space as per the
requirement dynamically.

 Disadvantages:
 When the size of Linked List increases, managing the pointers becomes
tedious