Chapter 6. Memory Management
6.1 Terminology
A central component of any operating system is the memory-management system. As the name implies, memory-management facilities are responsible for the management of memory resources available on a machine. These resources are typically layered in a hierarchical fashion, with memory-access times inversely related to their proximity to the CPU (see Figure 6.1). The primary memory system is main memory; the next level of storage is secondary storage or backing storage. Main-memory systems usually are constructed from random-access memories, whereas secondary stores are placed on disk drives. In certain workstation environments, the common two-level hierarchy is a three-level hierarchy, with the addition ...
Get Design and Implementation of the FreeBSD Operating System, 2nd Edition now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.
