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Memory Management with Swapping

Memory management in operating systems involves allocating memory to processes efficiently and securely.

One way to manage memory is by swapping, where the OS moves processes between main memory and a storage area (usually the hard disk or SSD) to free up space and manage limited resources.

In a swapping system, bitmaps and linked lists are two common data structures used to track memory allocation.

Swapping is a memory management technique where entire processes are swapped in and out of main memory to and from a secondary storage (like a disk). This allows the system to manage memory dynamically and make room for active processes by moving inactive ones out of memory temporarily.

  • It helps to utilize memory more efficiently by dynamically managing limited memory resources, especially when multiple processes are competing for space.

Note:

  • When a process is inactive or less frequently used, it is “swapped out” of the main memory to secondary storage.
  • When a swapped-out process is needed again, it is “swapped in” from secondary storage back to main memory.

Memory management using bitmaps involves representing the memory as a sequence of bits, where each bit corresponds to a fixed-sized block of memory.

  • A bit value of 1 indicates that the block is allocated, and a bit value of 0 indicates that the block is free.

How It Works:

  • Memory is divided into fixed-size blocks or allocation units.
  • A bitmap is created, with one bit representing each block.
  • When allocating memory, the system searches the bitmap for contiguous 0s (free blocks) of the required size.
  • When freeing memory, the corresponding bits are set back to 0.

In memory management with linked lists, memory is managed using a dynamic list of blocks, where each node in the list represents a block of memory.

  • Each node contains information about the size, status (allocated or free), and a pointer to the next block.

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