MEMORY MANAGEMENT M.SC.

-IT 2020

Contiguous and Non-Contiguous memory allocation in Operating System

Memory management

Memory is central to the operation of a computer system. It consists of a large array of words
or bytes each with its own address. In uniprogramming system, main memory has two parts one
for the operating system and another part is for the program currently being executed. In the
multiprogramming system, the memory part of the user is further divided into accommodate
processes. The task of the subdivision is cannot out by the operating system and is known as
memory management.

Memory management techniques

The memory management techniques are divided into two parts...

1. Uniprogramming:
In the uniprogramming technique, the RAM is divided into two parts one part is for the
resigning the operating system and other portion is for the user process. Here the border
register is used which contain the last address of the operating system parts. The operating
system will compare the user data addresses with the fence register and if it is different that
means the user is not entering in the OS area. Border register is also called boundary register
and is used to prevent a user from entering in the operating system area. Here the CPU
utilization is very poor and hence multiprogramming is used.
2. Multiprogramming:
In the multiprogramming, the multiple users can share the memory simultaneously. By
multiprogramming we mean there will be more than one process in the main memory and if the
running process wants to wait for an event like I/O then instead of sitting ideal CPU will make a
context switch and will pick another process.
a. Contiguous memory allocation
b. Non-contiguous memory allocation

a) Contiguous memory allocation

The Contiguous memory allocation is one of the methods of memory allocation. In contiguous
memory allocation, when a process requests for the memory, a single contiguous section of
memory blocks is assigned to the process according to its requirement.

 All the available memory space remains together in one place. It means freely available memory
partitions are not expanded here and there across the whole memory space.
 Both the operating system and the user must reside in the main memory. The main memory is
divided into two portions one portion is for the operating and other is for the user program.
 When any user process request for the memory a single section of the contiguous memory
block is given to that process according to its need. We can achieve contiguous memory
allocation by dividing memory into the fixed-sized partition.

A single process is allocated in that fixed sized single partition. But this will increase the degree of
multiprogramming means more than one process in the main memory that bounds the number of fixed

Department of MCA & M.SC.-IT, Dr. Shyama Prasad Mukherjee University, Ranchi
MEMORY MANAGEMENT M.SC.-IT 2020

partition done in memory. Internal fragmentation increases because of the contiguous memory
allocation.

Contiguous Memory Allocation

Example
Processes A, B, C, and D are in memory in Figure. Two free areas of memory exist after B
terminates; however, neither of them is large enough to accommodate another process. The kernel
performs compaction to create a single free memory area and initiates
process E in this area. It involves moving processes C and D in memory during
their execution.

Memory compaction involves dynamic relocation, which is not feasible without a relocation
register. In computers not having a relocation register, the kernel must resort to reuse of free
memory areas. However, this approach incurs delays in initiation of processes when large free
memory areas do not exist, e.g., initiation of process E would be delayed in Example 4.8 even
though the total free memory in the system exceeds the size of E.

Swapping
The kernel swaps out a process that is not in the running state by writing out its code and data
space to a swapping area on the disk. The swapped out process is brought back into memory
before it is due for another burst of CPU time. A basic issue in swapping is whether a swapped in
process should be loaded back into the same memory area that it occupied before it was
swapped out. If so, it‘s swapping in depends on swapping out of some other process that may
have been allocated that memory area in the meanwhile. It would be useful to be able to place
the swapped-in process elsewhere in memory; however, it would amount to dynamic relocation
of the process to a new memory area. As mentioned earlier, only computer systems that provide
a relocation register can achieve it.

Swapping is a technique of temporarily removing inactive programs from the memory of the
system. A process can be swapped temporarily out of the memory to a backing store and then
brought back in to the memory for continuing the execution. This process is called swapping.
Eg:-In a multi-programming environment with a round robin CPU scheduling whenever the time
quantum expires then the process that has just finished is swapped out and a new process swaps in
to the memory for execution.

Department of MCA & M.SC.-IT, Dr. Shyama Prasad Mukherjee University, Ranchi
MEMORY MANAGEMENT M.SC.-IT 2020

A variation of swap is priority based scheduling. When a low priority is executing and if a high
priority process arrives then a low priority will be swapped out and high priority is allowed for
execution.
This process is also called as Roll out and Roll in. physical address is computed during run time.
Swapping requires backing store and it should be large enough to accommodate the copies of all
memory images. The system maintains a ready queue consisting of all the processes whose
memory images are on the backing store or in memory that are ready to run. Swapping is constant
by other factors:

To swap a process, it should be completely idle. A process may be waiting for an i/o operation. If
the i/o is asynchronously accessing the user memory for i/o buffers, then the process cannot be
swapped Normally the process which is swapped out will be swapped back to the same memory
space that is occupied previously. This depends upon address binding.

If the binding is done at load time, then the process is moved to same memory location. If the
binding is done at run time, then the process is moved to different memory location. This is
because the

→ Fixed sized partition

In the fixed sized partition the system divides memory into fixed size partition (may or may not be of
the same size) here entire partition is allowed to a process and if there is some wastage inside the
partition is allocated to a process and if there is some wastage inside the partition then it is called
internal fragmentation.

Advantage: Management or book keeping is easy.

Department of MCA & M.SC.-IT, Dr. Shyama Prasad Mukherjee University, Ranchi
MEMORY MANAGEMENT M.SC.-IT 2020

Disadvantage: Internal fragmentation

→ Variable size partition

In the variable size partition, the memory is treated as one unit and space allocated to a process is
exactly the same as required and the leftover space can be reused again.

Advantage: There is no internal fragmentation.

Disadvantage: Management is very difficult as memory is becoming purely fragmented after some
time.

b) Non-contiguous memory allocation

The Non-contiguous memory allocation allows a process to acquire the several memory blocks
at the different location in the memory according to its requirement. The non-contiguous
memory allocation also reduces the memory wastage caused due to internal and external
fragmentation. As it utilizes the memory holes, created during internal and external fragmentation.

 The available free memory space are scattered here and there and all the free memory space is
not at one place. So this is time-consuming.
 A process will acquire the memory space but it is not at one place it is at the different locations
according to the process requirement.
 It reduces the wastage of memory which leads to internal and external fragmentation. This
utilizes all the free memory space which is created by a different process.

Department of MCA & M.SC.-IT, Dr. Shyama Prasad Mukherjee University, Ranchi
MEMORY MANAGEMENT M.SC.-IT 2020

Non-contiguous memory allocation is of different types,

1. Paging
2. Segmentation
3. Segmentation with paging

(I) PAGING

A non-contiguous policy with a fixed size partition is called paging. A computer can address more
memory than the amount of physically installed on the system. This extra memory is actually called
virtual memory. Paging technique is very important in implementing virtual memory.

Secondary memory is divided into equal size partition (fixed) called pages. Every process will have a
separate page table. The entries in the page table are the number of pages a process. At each entry either we
have an invalid pointer which means the page is not in main memory or we will get the corresponding
frame number.

Similarly, main memory is divided into small fixed-sized blocks of (physical) memory called frames and the
size of a frame is kept the same as that of a page to have optimum utilization of the main memory and to
avoid external fragmentation.

When the frame number is combined with instruction of set D than we will get the corresponding
physical address. Size of a page table is generally very large so cannot be accommodated inside the
PCB, therefore, PCB contains a register value PTBR( page table base register) which leads to the page
table.

Address Translation

Department of MCA & M.SC.-IT, Dr. Shyama Prasad Mukherjee University, Ranchi
MEMORY MANAGEMENT M.SC.-IT 2020

Page address is called logical address and represented by page number and the offset.
Logical address=Page number + page offset

Frame address is called physical address and represented by a frame number and the offset.
Physical address = Frame number + page offset

A data structure called page map table is used to keep track of the relation between a pages of a
process to a frame in physical memory

When the system allocates a frame to any page, it translates this logical address into a physical
address and creates entry into the page table to be used throughout execution of the program.
When a process is to be executed, its corresponding pages are loaded into any available memory
frames.

Suppose you have a program of 8Kb but your memory can accommodate only 5Kb at a given point
in time, then the paging concept will come into picture. When a computer runs out of RAM, the
operating system (OS) will move idle or unwanted pages of memory to secondary memory to free
up RAM for other processes and brings them back when needed by the program.
This process continues during the whole execution of the program where the OS keeps removing
idle pages from the main memory and write them onto the secondary memory and bring them
back when required by the program.

Advantages:

 It is independent of external fragmentation.

 Paging reduces external fragmentation, but still suffers from internal fragmentation.
 Paging is simple to implement and assumed as an efficient memory management technique.

Department of MCA & M.SC.-IT, Dr. Shyama Prasad Mukherjee University, Ranchi
MEMORY MANAGEMENT M.SC.-IT 2020

Disadvantages:

 It makes the translation very slow as main memory access two times.
 A page table is a burden over the system which occupies considerable space.
 Due to equal size of the pages and frames, swapping becomes very easy.
 Page table requires extra memory space, so may not be good for a system having small
RAM.

(II) SEGMENTATION

Segmentation is a programmer view of the memory where instead of dividing a process into equal size
partition we divided according to program into partition called segments. The translation is the same as
paging but paging segmentation is independent of internal fragmentation but suffers from external
fragmentation. Reason of external fragmentation is program can be divided into segments but segment
must be contiguous in nature.

Segmentation is a memory management technique in which each job is divided into several segments of
different sizes, one for each module that contains pieces that perform related functions. Each segment is
actually a different logical address space of the program. When a process is to be executed, its
corresponding segmentation is loaded into non-contiguous memory though every segment is loaded into a
contiguous block of available memory.

Segmentation memory management works very similar to paging but here segments are of
variable length where as in paging pages are of fixed size. A program segment contains the
program's main function, utility functions, data structures, and so on.

The operating system maintains a segment map table for every process and a list of free memory
blocks along with segment numbers, their size and corresponding memory locations in main
memory. For each segment, the table stores the starting address of the segment and the length of
the segment. A reference to a memory location includes a value that identifies a segment and an
offset.

Department of MCA & M.SC.-IT, Dr. Shyama Prasad Mukherjee University, Ranchi
MEMORY MANAGEMENT M.SC.-IT 2020

(III) SEGMENTATION WITH PAGING

In segmentation with paging, we take advantages of both segmentation as well as paging. It is a kind of
multilevel paging but in multilevel paging, we divide a page table into equal size partition but here in
segmentation with paging, we divide it according to segments. All the properties are the same as that
of paging because segments are divided into pages.

Department of MCA & M.SC.-IT, Dr. Shyama Prasad Mukherjee University, Ranchi