Memory Management

Memory Management

Basically what it all boils down to is memory being divided into two parts, one for the operating system and one for the programs currently being executed on the computer. The maintaining and handling of these processes is what you know as memory management. It is essential for any machine to have proper memory management so that the processor is never sitting on idle. There are five main requirements that will be covered in this paper, relocation of memory, protection, memory sharing, logical organization, and physical organization.

The first requirements in memory management that will be discussed are going to be the relocation and protection of memory. Relocation of memory is so important because generally when a computer is running the memory is being used by different programs and basic processes that must always be running, always new programs flowing in and out. So as an example here, if I were to close my internet browser, open up paint and draw a bit, then proceed to open up my browser again it wouldn’t make sense if the browser was required to run on the same exact memory that it was using before, relocation allows it to be moved along the different physical addresses. Protection on the other hand is to ensure that during relocation or if the computer is idle that other programs don’t affect the processes that they aren’t authorized too, this is very important in providing a stable system; otherwise we would have processes clashing all the time.

The next section is memory sharing, this provides a little more room to work for your memory especially when you are running multiple programs. Sharing ensures that for certain programs, like say a video game on your computer, can share its memory with the sound card drivers, and video card drivers, and everything so that there only needs to be one copy of the game open. Otherwise each separate program or process that tried accessing the game would have to run its own copy which would be a...