Memory Memory Management in Management in

Windows and LinuxWindows and Linux

&

Windows Memory Windows Memory ManagementManagement

• Virtual memory manager (VMM)– Executive component responsible for managing memory

• Lazy allocation– Avoid allocating memory until necessary

• Prefetching– Move pages from disk to main memory before they are needed

• Pagefile– Stores pages that do not fit in main memory

– Windows XP supports up to 16 pagefiles

Memory OrganizationMemory Organization

• 32-bit virtual address space– Windows 64-Bit Edition has 64-bit address space.

– 4GB virtual address space per process

• User space vs. System space– Process can access only user space

– VMM stores page tables and other data in system space

– 2GB user space, 2GB system space

• 4KB pages

Memory OrganizationMemory Organization

• Two-level hierarchical memory map– Page directory table

• Page directory entries (PDEs) point to page table

• One page directory table per process

• Location in page directory register

– Page table• Page table entries (PTEs) point to page frames

– Page frame• Contains page of data

• TLB (translation lookaside buffer) accelerates address translation

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Virtual address translationVirtual address translation

Memory AllocationMemory Allocation

Page frame statesPage frame states

Page Replacement ProcessPage Replacement Process

Linux Memory ManagementLinux Memory Management

• Memory manager supports 32- and 64-bit addresses• Also supports NUMA (nonuniform memory access

architectures)• To allow Linux to scale from desktops and

workstations, to servers and supercomputers

Page Table OrganizationPage Table Organization

Memory OrganizationMemory Organization

• Linux uses paging exclusively– Often implemented using a single page size– On 32-bit systems, kernel can address 4GB of data

• On 64-bit systems, the kernel supports up to 2 petabytes of data

– Three levels of page tables• Page global directory• Page middle directory• Page tables

– On systems that support only two levels of page tables, page middle directory contains exactly one entry

• Virtual address space organized into virtual memory areas to group information with same permissions (similar to segments)

Linux on the IA-32 architectureLinux on the IA-32 architecture

• Kernel attempts to reduce overhead due to TLB flushing on context switch

• Divides each 4GB address space into a 3GB region for process data and instructions and a 1GB address space for kernel data and instructions

• Most of the kernel’s address space is directly mapped to main memory so that it can access information belonging to any process

Kernel virtual address space Kernel virtual address space mappingmapping

Memory OrganizationMemory Organization

• Memory zones– DMA memory: first 16MB of main memory

• Kernel attempts to make memory available in this region for legacy hardware

– Normal memory: between 16MB and 896MB on the IA-32 architecture

• Stores user data and most kernel data

– High memory: > 896MB on the IA-32 architecture• Contains memory that the kernel does not permanently map to its

address space

• Bounce buffer– Allocates low memory temporarily for I/O– Data is “bounced” to high memory after I/O completes

Physical memory zones on the Physical memory zones on the IA-32IA-32

Page ReplacementPage Replacement

• Page replacement is performed independently for each page zone– Algorithm is a variant of the clock page-replacement algorithm

• Two linked lists per zone– Active list contains pages that have been referenced recently– Inactive list contains pages that have been used less recently

• Page enters system at the head of the inactive list, referenced bit set• If the page is active or inactive and its referenced bit is off, the bit is turned

on– Ensures that recently referenced pages are not selected for

replacement• If page is inactive and is being referenced for the second time (referenced

bit is on), page is moved to head of the active list, referenced bit is cleared– Allows the kernel to distinguish between referenced pages that have

been accessed once and those that have been accessed more than once recently

– The latter are placed in the active list so they are not selected for replacement

Page-replacement system Page-replacement system overviewoverview

SwappingSwapping

• kswapd (the kernel swap daemon)– Periodically frees page frames by flushing dirty pages to disk

– Swaps pages from the tail of the inactive list• First determines if the page has a valid entry in the swap cache

– Enables clean pages to be freed immediately

• Cannot free a page frame if

– Page is shared

• kswapd must unmap multiple references to the page

• Reverse mapping improves efficiency

– Page is dirty

• kswapd must flush it to disk

• Performed asynchronously by pdflush

– Page is locked (e.g., currently under I/O)

• kswapd must wait until page is unlocked