Ch9 Virtual Memory Edited

Chapter 10: Virtual Memory
Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
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 ©2018
Objectives
 Define virtual memory and describe its benefits.

 Illustrate how pages are loaded into memory using demand paging.
 Apply the FIFO, optimal, and LRU page-replacement algorithms.
 Describe the working set of a process, and explain how it is related to
program locality.
 Describe how Linux, Windows 10, and Solaris manage virtual memory.
 Design a virtual memory manager simulation in the C programming
language.
Background
 Code needs to be in memory to execute, but entire program rarely
used
• Error code, unusual routines, large data structures
 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
Virtual memory
 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
Virtual memory (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
 Pages can be shared during fork(),
speeding process creation
Shared Library Using Virtual Memory
Demand Paging
 Could bring entire process into memory at load time

 Or bring a page into memory only when it is needed
• 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
Demand Paging
 Could bring entire process into

memory at load time
 Or bring a page into memory only
when it is needed
• Less I/O needed, no
unnecessary I/O
• Less memory needed
• Faster response
• More users
 Similar to paging system with
swapping (diagram on right)
Basic Concepts
 With swapping, pager guesses which pages will be used before
swapping out again
 Instead, pager brings in only those pages into memory
 How to determine that set of pages?
• Need new MMU functionality to implement demand paging
 If pages needed are already memory resident
• No difference from non 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 needing to change code
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
Steps in Handling Page Fault
1. If there is a reference to a page, first reference to that page will trap to

operating system
• Page fault
2. Operating system looks at another table to decide:
• Invalid reference  abort
• Just not in memory
3. Find free frame
4. Swap page into frame via scheduled disk operation
5. Reset tables to indicate page now in memory
Set validation bit = v
6. Restart the instruction that caused the page fault
Steps in Handling a Page Fault (Cont.)
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?
Free-Frame List
 When a page fault occurs, the operating system must bring the
desired page from secondary storage into main memory.
 Most operating systems maintain a free-frame list -- a pool of free
frames for satisfying such requests.
 Operating system typically allocate free frames using a technique

known as zero-fill-on-demand -- the content of the frames zeroed-
out before being allocated.
 When a system starts up, all available memory is placed on the free-
frame list.
Stages in Demand Paging – Worse Case
1. Trap to the operating system

2. Save the user registers and process state
3. Determine that the interrupt was a page fault
4. Check that the page reference was legal and determine the location of
the page on the disk
5. Issue a read from the disk to a free frame:
a) Wait in a queue for this device until the read request is serviced
b) Wait for the device seek and/or latency time
c) Begin the transfer of the page to a free frame
Stages in Demand Paging (Cont.)
6. While waiting, allocate the CPU to some other user

7. Receive an interrupt from the disk I/O subsystem (I/O completed)
8. Save the registers and process state for the other user
9. Determine that the interrupt was from the disk
10. Correct the page table and other tables to show page is now in memory
11. Wait for the CPU to be allocated to this process again
12. Restore the user registers, process state, and new page table, and then
resume the interrupted instruction
Performance of Demand Paging
 Three major activities
• Service the interrupt – careful coding means just several hundred
instructions needed
• Read the page – lots of time
• Restart the process – again just a small amount of time
 Page Fault Rate 0  p  1
• if p = 0 no page faults
• if p = 1, every reference is a fault
 Effective Access Time (EAT)
EAT = (1 – p) x memory access
+ p (page fault overhead
+ swap page out
+ swap page in )
Demand Paging Example
 Memory access time = 200 nanoseconds
 Average page-fault service time = 8 milliseconds
 EAT = (1 – p) x 200 + p (8 milliseconds)
= (1 – p x 200 + p x 8,000,000
= 200 + p x 7,999,800
 If one access out of 1,000 causes a page fault, then
EAT = 8.2 microseconds.
This is a slowdown by a factor of 40!!
 If want performance degradation < 10 percent
• 220 > 200 + 7,999,800 x p
20 > 7,999,800 x p
• p < .0000025
• < one page fault in every 400,000 memory accesses
Demand Paging Optimizations
 Swap space I/O faster than file system I/O even if on the same device
• Swap allocated in larger chunks, less management needed than file
system
 Copy entire process image to swap space at process load time
• Then page in and out of swap space
• Used in older BSD Unix
 Demand page in from program binary on disk, but discard rather than paging
out when freeing frame
• Used in Solaris and current BSD
• Still need to write to swap space
 Pages not associated with a file (like stack and heap) – anonymous
memory
 Pages modified in memory but not yet written back to the file system
 Mobile systems
• Typically don’t support swapping
• Instead, demand page from file system and reclaim read-only pages
(such as code)
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
• Why zero-out a page before allocating it?
 vfork() variation on fork() system call has parent suspend and child using
copy-on-write address space of parent
• Designed to have child call exec()
• Very efficient
Before Process 1 Modifies Page C
After Process 1 Modifies Page C
What Happens if There is no Free Frame?
 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
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
- 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
Note now potentially 2 page transfers for page fault – increasing EAT
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
7,0,1,2,0,3,0,4,2,3,0,3,0,3,2,1,2,0,1,7,0,1
Graph of Page Faults Versus the Number of Frames
First-In-First-Out (FIFO) Algorithm
 Reference string: 7,0,1,2,0,3,0,4,2,3,0,3,0,3,2,1,2,0,1,7,0,1
 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
• Adding more frames can cause more page faults!
 Belady’s Anomaly
 How to track ages of pages?
• Just use a FIFO queue
FIFO Illustrating Belady’s Anomaly
Optimal Algorithm
 Replace page that will not be used for longest period of time
• 9 is optimal for the example
 How do you know this?
• Can’t read the future
 Used for measuring how well your algorithm performs
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
 12 faults – better than FIFO but worse than OPT

 Generally good algorithm and frequently used
 But how to implement?
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 Algorithm (Cont.)
 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
LRU Approximation Algorithms (cont.)
 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 Algorithm
Enhanced Second-Chance Algorithm
 Improve algorithm by using reference bit and modify bit (if available)
in concert
 Take ordered pair (reference, modify):
• (0, 0) neither recently used not modified – best page to replace
• (0, 1) not recently used but modified – not quite as good, must
write out before replacement
• (1, 0) recently used but clean – probably will be used again soon
• (1, 1) recently used and modified – probably will be used again
soon and need to write out before replacement
 When page replacement called for, use the clock scheme but use the
four classes replace page in lowest non-empty class
• Might need to search circular queue several times
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
Page-Buffering Algorithms
 Keep a pool of free frames, always
• Then frame available when needed, not found at fault time
• Read page into free frame and select victim to evict and add to
free pool
• When convenient, evict victim
 Possibly, keep list of modified pages
• When backing store otherwise idle, write pages there and set to
non-dirty
 Possibly, keep free frame contents intact and note what is in them
• If referenced again before reused, no need to load contents again
from disk
• Generally useful to reduce penalty if wrong victim frame selected
Applications and Page Replacement
 All of these algorithms have OS guessing about future page access
 Some applications have better knowledge – i.e. databases
 Memory intensive applications can cause double buffering
• OS keeps copy of page in memory as I/O buffer
• Application keeps page in memory for its own work
 Operating system can given direct access to the disk, getting out of
the way of the applications
• Raw disk mode
 Bypasses buffering, locking, etc.
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
m = 64
si  size of process pi s1 = 10
S   si s2 = 127
m  total number of frames a1 =
10
´ 62 » 4
137
s
ai  allocation for pi  i  m 127
S a2 = ´ 62 » 57
137
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
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 (Cont.)
 Thrashing. A process is busy swapping pages in and out
Demand Paging and Thrashing
 Why does demand paging work?

Locality model
• Process migrates from one locality to another
• Localities may overlap
 Why does thrashing occur?
 size of locality > total memory size
 Limit effects by using local or priority page replacement
Locality In A Memory-Reference Pattern
Working-Set Model
   working-set window  a fixed number of page references
Example: 10,000 instructions
 WSSi (working set of Process Pi) = total number of pages referenced
in the most recent  (varies in time)
• if  too small will not encompass entire locality
• if  too large will encompass several localities
• if  =   will encompass entire program
 D =  WSSi  total demand frames
• Approximation of locality
Working-Set Model (Cont.)
 if D > m  Thrashing
 Policy if D > m, then suspend or swap out one of the
processes
Keeping Track of the Working Set
 Approximate with interval timer + a reference bit
 Example:  = 10,000
• Timer interrupts after every 5000 time units
• Keep in memory 2 bits for each page
• Whenever a timer interrupts copy and sets the values of all
reference bits to 0
• If one of the bits in memory = 1  page in working set
 Why is this not completely accurate?
 Improvement = 10 bits and interrupt every 1000 time units
Page-Fault Frequency
 More direct approach than WSS
 Establish “acceptable” page-fault frequency (PFF) rate and use
local replacement policy
• If actual rate too low, process loses frame
• If actual rate too high, process gains frame
Working Sets and Page Fault Rates
 Direct relationship between working set of a process and its
page-fault rate
 Working set changes over time
 Peaks and valleys over time
Allocating Kernel Memory
 Treated differently from user memory
 Often allocated from a free-memory pool
• Kernel requests memory for structures of varying sizes
• Some kernel memory needs to be contiguous
 i.e., for device 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
 Disadvantage - fragmentation
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
End of Chapter 10
Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018

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Chapter 10: Virtual Memory

 Define virtual memory and describe its benefits.

 Virtual memory – separation of user logical memory from physical

 Virtual address space – logical view of how process is stored in

 Could bring entire process into memory at load time

 Could bring entire process into

 During MMU address translation, if valid–invalid bit in page table entry

1. If there is a reference to a page, first reference to that page will trap to

 Extreme case – start process with no pages in memory

 Consider an instruction that could access several different locations

• Auto increment/decrement location

 Operating system typically allocate free frames using a technique

1. Trap to the operating system

6. While waiting, allocate the CPU to some other user

 Frame-allocation algorithm determines

 Use past knowledge rather than future

 12 faults – better than FIFO but worse than OPT

 Keep a counter of the number of references that have been made

 Proportional allocation – Allocate according to the size of process

 Why does demand paging work?

 Limit effects by using local or priority page replacement

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