Memory Management

Memory management is a very essential factor in a computer system. One difficult task in a multiprogramming system is the subdivision of memory, which is handled by the operating system. The subdividing of memory is known as memory management. In order for memory management to be effective and efficient in a multiprogramming system, there are five key requirements, which must be met.

• Relocation

• Protection

• Sharing

• Logical organization

• Physical organization

The first key requirement of an effective memory management is called relocation. The primary job of relocation is to allow multiple processes to be carried out from their physical place in memory without interfering with other processes. The job of relocation, is the ability to perform processes independently from their physical place in memory, is crucial for memory management: virtually all the techniques in this field rely on the ability to relocate processes efficiently. In a multiprogramming system, relocation becomes apparent when a program does not know ahead of time what processes will be executed, where it is physically located in memory or how much memory is available in the system for the program. Since a program can be loaded at any time from a random address in memory, or even change address during execution, or swapping from one place in the memory to another place, a program must be required to meet all these variables.

The second requirement of memory management is protection. In multiprogramming system, the operating system restricts how processes can access the memory. Protection is use to protect a process to read or write to memory that is not allotted to it, stopping malicious or malfunctioning code in one program from interfering with the execution of another. Sharing allows several processes to access the same portion of memory

Next requisite is sharing. Sharing permits numerous processes to access the same portion of memory. Generally, memory is...