Operating Systems: Concurrent and Distributed Software Design

5.10. Summary

Memory management of some kind is necessary in every component computer of a software system. In some cases it can be very simple, when embedded software runs indefinitely. In other cases demands on memory are dynamic. Even in the case of permanently resident software it is likely that unpredictable demands will be made on data space, for example, for buffer space for packets coming in from a network.

Segmentation was considered as a means of structuring a process's address space and of sharing some parts with other processes while keeping other parts private. Hardware support was outlined but details were left for further study. Paging mechanisms were also discussed. These are transparent to the programmer. A large virtual address ...