Virtual Memory

Outline
• Background
• Demand Paging
• Copy-on-Write
• Page Replacement
• Allocation of Frames
• Thrashing
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
the 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)
• 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
Basic Concepts
• With swapping, the pager guesses which pages will be used
before swapping them out again
• 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
• Use page table with valid-invalid bit (see chapter 9)
 Page table with Valid-Invalid Bit
• With each page table entry a valid–invalid bit is associated
(v  in-memory, 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 the

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 (go to step 3)
3. Find free frame (what if there is none?)
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
• Pure demand paging: 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
• 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
• 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
• Input the page from disk – 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

• How to track ages of pages?

• Just use a FIFO queue
Belady’s Anomaly
• Consider the string 1,2,3,4,1,2,5,1,2,3,4,5
• Adding more frames can cause more page faults!
• Graph illustrating Belady’s Anomaly
 Optimal Algorithm
• Replace page that will not be used for longest period of time
• 9 page faults is optimal for the example
• How do you know this?
• Can’t read the future
• Used for measuring how well your algorithm performs
• Optimal is an example of stack algorithms that don’t suffer from Belady’s Anomaly
 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
• LRU is another example of stack algorithms; thus it does not suffer
from Belady’s Anomaly
 LRU Algorithm Implementation
• Time-counter implementation
• Every page entry has a time-counter variable; every time a page is
referenced through this entry, copy the value of the clock into the
time-counter
• When a page needs to be changed, look at the time-counters to find
smallest value
• Search through a table is 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
 Stack Implementation
• Use of a stack to record most recent page references
 LRU Approximation Algorithms
• Needs special hardware
• 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 provide 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
si
ai  allocation for pi  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
• Process execution time can vary greatly
• Greater throughput so more commonly used
• Local replacement – each process selects from only its own set
of allocated frames
• More consistent per-process performance
• But possibly underutilized memory
• What if a process does not have enough frames?
 Reclaiming Pages
• A strategy to implement global page-replacement policy
• All memory requests are satisfied from the free-frame list,
rather than waiting for the list to drop to zero before we begin
selecting pages for replacement,
• Page replacement is triggered when the list falls below a
certain threshold.
• This strategy attempts to ensure there is always sufficient free
memory to satisfy new requests.
 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 the 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

• To avoid trashing:
• Calculate the  size of locality
• Policy:
• if  size of locality > total memory size suspend or swap out one of the
processes
• Issue: how to calculate “ size of locality”
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 the 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.)
• D =  WSSi  total demand frames
• Approximation of locality
• m = total number of frames
• 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 i – B1i and B2i
• Whenever a timer interrupts copy the reference to one of the
Bj and sets the values of all reference bits to 0
• If either B1i or B2i = 1, it implies that Page i is in the working
set
• Why is this not completely accurate?
• Improvement = 10 bits and interrupt every 1000 time
units
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
 Page-Fault Frequency Algorithm
• 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
 Prepaging
• To reduce the large number of page faults that occurs at
process startup
• Prepage all or some of the pages a process will need,
before they are referenced
• But if prepaged pages are unused, I/O and memory was
wasted
• Assume s pages are prepaged and α of the pages is used
• Question: is the cost of s * α save pages faults is greater or
less than the cost of prepaging s * (1- α) unnecessary pages?
• If α is close to 0  prepaging loses
• If α is close to 1  prepaging wins
Reference: Operating System Concepts, Abraham Silberschatz,
Peter Baer Galvin, Greg Gagne, Wiley Publications

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