Page size

1. Memory is better utilized with smaller pages, however.

2. If a process is allocated memory starting at location 00000 and continuing until it has as much as it needs, it probably will not end exactly on a page boundary.

3. Thus, a part of the final page must be allocated (because pages are the units of allocation) but will be unused (creating internal fragmentation).

4. Assuming independence of process size and page size, we can expect that, on the average, half of the final page of each process will be wasted.

5. This loss is only 256 bytes for a page of 512 bytes but is 4,096 bytes for a page of 8,192 bytes.

6. To minimize internal fragmentation, then, we need a small page size.