Lecture On Virtual Memory

Chapter 10: Virtual Memory
Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne

Chapter 10: 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 – 10th Edition 10.2 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
 To examine the relationship between shared
memory and memory-mapped files
 To explore how kernel memory is managed
Background
 Code needs to be in memory to execute, but entire
program rarely used
 Entire program code not needed at same time
 Consider ability to execute partially-loaded program
 Program no longer constrained by limits of
physical memory
 Each program takes less memory while running ->
more programs run at the same time
 Increased CPU utilization and throughput with
no increase in response time or turnaround
time
 Less I/O needed to load or swap programs into
memory -> each user program runs faster
Background (Cont.)
 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
Background (Cont.)
 Virtual address space – logical view of how
process is stored in memory
 Usually start at address 0, contiguous addresses
until end of space
 Meanwhile, physical memory organized in page
frames
 MMU must map logical to physical
 Virtual memory can be implemented via:
 Demand paging
 Demand segmentation
Virtual Memory That is Larger Than Physical Memory
Virtual-address Space
 Usually design logical address
space for stack to start at Max
logical address and grow “down”
while heap grows “up”
 Maximizes address space
use
 Unused address space
between the two is hole
 No physical memory
needed until heap or
stack grows to a given
new page
 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
Shared Library Using Virtual Memory
Demand Paging
 Could bring entire process into
memory at load time - Swapping
 Or bring a page into memory
only when it is needed – Demand
Paging
 Less I/O needed, no
unnecessary I/O
 Less memory needed
 Faster response
 More users
 Similar to paging system with
swapping (diagram on right)
 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
Basic Concepts
 With swapping, pager guesses which pages will be
used before swapping out again
 Instead, pager brings in only those pages into memory.
 Paging involves dividing a process's memory into fixed-
size pages and storing them in physical memory or
secondary storage.
 When a process needs to access a page that is not
currently in memory, the operating system fetches it
from secondary storage and places it in physical
memory. This is known as a page fault.
 How to determine that set of pages?
 Need new MMU functionality to implement demand
paging
 If page needed and not memory resident
 Need to detect and load the page into memory from
storage
 Without changing program behavior
Without programmer
 – 10th Edition
Operating System Concepts 10.11needing to change code Galvin and Gagne
Silberschatz,
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:
 During MMU address translation, if valid–invalid bit in

page table entry is i  page fault
Page Table When Some Pages Are Not in Main Memory
Page Fault
 If there is a reference to a page, first reference to

that page will trap(software generated interrupt) to
operating system:
page fault
1. Operating system looks at another table to decide:
 Invalid reference  abort
 Just not in memory
2. Find free 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
Steps in Handling a Page Fault
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
 Consider fetch and decode of instruction which adds
2 numbers from memory and stores result back to
memory
 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
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?
Process creation
 Virtual memory allows other benefits during process
creation:
 Copy-on-Write:
 If the process forks (i.e., creates a new child
process), the operating system uses a technique
called copy-on-write to avoid duplicating the
process's entire virtual address space. Instead,
the child process initially shares the same physical
pages as the parent process, and only makes
copies of pages that are modified.
 Memory-Mapped Files (Later)
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
 Pool should always have free frames for fast demand
page execution
 Don’t want to have to free a frame as well as other
processing on page fault
Before Process 1 Modifies Page C
Same physical memory shared
After Process 1 Modifies Page C
A new copy of page C is created as it was modified

thus Copy-On-Write – Efficient memory technique
rather than duplicating all process in pages.
What Happens if There is no Free Frame?
 No Frames available since:

 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
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
Need For Page Replacement
There is a Need for Page

Replacement Since there is no free
frames to Load M from Disk to the
Memory/
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(Replace)
- 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
Page Replacement
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
 Results depend on number of frames available
 In all our examples, the reference string of referenced
page numbers is
7,0,1,2,0,3,0,4,2,3,0,3,2,1,2,0,1,7,0,1
Graph of Page Faults Versus The Number of Frames
First-In-First-Out (FIFO) Algorithm
 Reference string: 7,0,1,2,0,3,0,4,2,3,0,3,2,1,2,0,1,7,0,1
 3 frames (3 pages can be in memory at a time per
process)
15 page faults
 Can vary by reference string: consider
1,2,3,4,1,2,5,1,2,3,4,5 with 3 frames vs 4 Frames?
 Adding more frames can cause more page faults!
 Belady’s Anomaly
FIFO Illustrating Belady’s Anomaly
Optimal Algorithm
 Replace page that will not be used for longest period of time
 Once memory is full, apply optimal page replacement
 You will need to know in advance the future string values
 How do you know this?
 Can’t read the future
 Used for measuring how well your algorithm performs
9 page faults is optimal for the

example
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 (last 3
recents)
 12 faults – better than FIFO but worse than OPT

 Generally good algorithm and frequently used
 But how to implement?
Class Activity
 Consider the following reference string:
1, 2, 3, 4, 2, 1, 5, 6, 2, 1, 2, 3, 7, 6, 3, 2, 1, 2, 3, 6
If four frames are used, how many page faults would

occur using :
A. FIFO Replacement
B. Optimal Replacement
C. Least Recently Used (LRU) Replacement
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
Use Of A Stack to Record Most Recent Page References
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
Second-Chance (clock) Page-Replacement Algorithm
Counting Algorithms
 Keep a counter of the number of references that have
been made to each page
 Not common
 Lease Frequently Used (LFU) Algorithm: replaces

page with smallest count
 Most Frequently Used (MFU) Algorithm: based on the

argument that the page with the smallest count was
probably just brought in and has yet to be used
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
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 process pi
S   si
m  total number of frames
s
ai  allocation for pi  i  m
S
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
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
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
Thrashing
 Consider what occurs if a process does not have “enough”
frames—that is, it does not have the minimum number of
frames it needs to support pages in the working set.
 The process will quickly page-fault. At this point, it must
replace
some page.
 However, since all its pages are in active use, it must
replace a page
that will be needed again right away.
 Consequently, it quickly faults again, and again, and again,
replacing pages that it must bring back in immediately.
 This high paging activity is called thrashing.
 A process is thrashing if it is spending more time paging
than executing.
 As you might expect, thrashing results in severe
performance problems.
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
Memory-Mapped Files
 Memory-mapped files are a technique used in
computer systems to allow programs to access files
stored on disk as if they were in main memory.
 This is achieved by mapping a region of the file
directly into memory, allowing the program to access
the file's contents using normal memory operations.
 The operating system handles the actual
implementation of memory-mapped files, and it is
generally done by creating a virtual memory address
space that corresponds to the file's contents.
 When the program accesses this memory, the
operating system automatically fetches the required
data from the file, either from memory or by reading it
from the disk if necessary.
Memory Mapped Files
Shared Memory via Memory-Mapped I/O
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
Buddy System Allocator
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
Slab Allocation
Operating System Examples
 Windows
 Solaris
Windows
 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
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
Class Activity
 Consider the following reference string:
2, 3, 7, 6, 3, 2, 1, 2, 3, 6
If four frames are used, how many page faults would

occur using :
A. FIFO Replacement
B. Optimal Replacement
C. Least Recently Used (LRU) Replacement
Which Replacement is the better one to use?
Remember Optimal is only used as a reference point
(Similar to SJF) we cannot predict the future.
End of Chapter 10
Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne

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Chapter 10: Virtual Memory

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne

 To describe the benefits of a virtual memory

 During MMU address translation, if valid–invalid bit in

 If there is a reference to a page, first reference to

2. Find free frame

 auto increment/decrement location

Same physical memory shared

A new copy of page C is created as it was modified

 No Frames available since:

 Prevent over-allocation of memory by modifying

There is a Need for Page

2. Find a free frame:

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

4. Continue the process by restarting the instruction that

 Frame-allocation algorithm determines

9 page faults is optimal for the

 12 faults – better than FIFO but worse than OPT

If four frames are used, how many page faults would

 Lease Frequently Used (LFU) Algorithm: replaces

 Most Frequently Used (MFU) Algorithm: based on the

 Proportional allocation – Allocate according to the

 If process Pi generates a page fault,

 Local replacement – each process selects from

 Thrashing  a process is busy swapping pages in and

If four frames are used, how many page faults would

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne

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