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Memory management (also dynamic memory management, dynamic storage allocation, or dynamic memory allocation) is a form of resource management applied to computer memory.The essential requirement of memory management is to provide ways to dynamically allocate portions of memory to programs at their request, and free it for reuse when no longer needed.
In operating systems, memory management is the function responsible for managing the computer's primary memory. [1]: 105–208 The memory management function keeps track of the status of each memory location, either allocated or free. It determines how memory is allocated among competing processes, deciding which gets memory, when they receive ...
In computer science, region-based memory management is a type of memory management in which each allocated object is assigned to a region. A region, also called a zone , arena , area , or memory context , is a collection of allocated objects that can be efficiently reallocated or deallocated all at once.
The C programming language manages memory statically, automatically, or dynamically.Static-duration variables are allocated in main memory, usually along with the executable code of the program, and persist for the lifetime of the program; automatic-duration variables are allocated on the stack and come and go as functions are called and return.
Therefore, stack based allocation is suitable for temporary data or data which is no longer required after the current function exits. A thread's assigned stack size can be as small as only a few bytes on some small CPUs. Allocating more memory on the stack than is available can result in a crash due to stack overflow.
With virtual memory, a contiguous range of virtual addresses can be mapped to several non-contiguous blocks of physical memory; this non-contiguous allocation is one of the benefits of paging. [8] [3] However, paged mapping causes another problem, internal fragmentation. This occurs when a program requests a block of memory that does not ...
A free list (or freelist) is a data structure used in a scheme for dynamic memory allocation. It operates by connecting unallocated regions of memory together in a linked list, using the first word of each unallocated region as a pointer to the next. It is most suitable for allocating from a memory pool, where all objects have the same size.
It is based on slab allocation method and paging memory that allows swapping. Paging was implemented in AmigaOS 4.1 but may lock up system if all physical memory is used up. [31] Swap memory could be activated and deactivated any moment allowing the user to choose to use only physical RAM.