Subject: Operating System

Topic: Memory Management

Difficulty: High

Need of Page Replacement

If we assumed that each page faults at most once when it is first referenced. This representation is not strictly accurate, however. If a process of ten pages actually uses only half of them, then demand paging saves the I/O necessary to load the five pages that are never used. We could also increase our degree of multiprogramming by running twice as many processes. Thus, if we had forty frames, we could run eight processes, rather than the four that could run if each required ten frames (five of which were never used).

If we increase our degree of multiprogramming, we are over-allocating memory. If we run six processes, each of which is ten pages in size but actually uses only five pages, we have higher CPU utilization and throughput, with ten frames to spare. It is possible, however, that each of these processes, for a particular data set, may suddenly try to use all ten of its pages, resulting in a need for sixty frames when only forty are available.

Further, consider that system memory is not used only for holding program pages. Buffers forI/O also consume a considerable amount of memory. This use can increase the strain on memory-placement algorithms. Deciding how much memory to allocate to I/O and how much to program pages is a significant challenge. Some systems allocate a fixed percentage of memory for I/O buffers, whereas others allow both user processes and the I/O subsystem to compete for all system memory

Over-allocation of memory manifests itself as follows. While a user process is executing, a page fault occurs. The operating system determines where the desired page is residing on the disk but then finds that there are no free frames on the free-frame list; all memory is in use in Figure.

The operating system has several options at this point. It could terminate the user process. However, demand paging is the operating system’s attempt to improve the computer system’s utilization and throughput. Users should not be aware that their processes are running on a paged system—paging should be logically transparent to the user. So this option is not the best choice.

The operating system could instead swap out a process, freeing all its frames and reducing the level of multiprogramming. This option is a good one in certain circumstances, Here, we discuss the most common solution: page replacement.