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Paged allocation divides the computer's primary memory into fixed-size units called page frames, and the program's virtual address space into pages of the same size. The hardware memory management unit maps pages to frames. The physical memory can be allocated on a page basis while the address space appears contiguous.
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.
Memory pools, also called fixed-size blocks allocation, is the use of pools for memory management that allows dynamic memory allocation. Dynamic memory allocation can, and has been achieved through the use of techniques such as malloc and C++'s operator new; although established and reliable implementations, these suffer from fragmentation ...
Slab allocation is a memory management mechanism intended for the efficient memory allocation of objects. In comparison with earlier mechanisms, it reduces fragmentation caused by allocations and deallocations. This technique is used for retaining allocated memory containing a data object of a certain type for reuse upon subsequent allocations ...
A memory address a is said to be n-byte aligned when a is a multiple of n (where n is a power of 2). In this context, a byte is the smallest unit of memory access, i.e. each memory address specifies a different byte. An n-byte aligned address would have a minimum of log 2 (n) least-significant zeros when expressed in binary.
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. Memory allocators using region-based managements are often called area allocators, and when they work by only "bumping" a single pointer, as bump allocators.
Programs which use the same library have virtual addresses that map to the same pages (which contain the library's code and data). When programs want to modify the library's code, they use copy-on-write, so memory is only allocated when needed. Shared memory is an efficient means of communication between programs.
The largest possible memory block malloc can allocate depends on the host system, particularly the size of physical memory and the operating system implementation. Theoretically, the largest number should be the maximum value that can be held in a size_t type, which is an implementation-dependent unsigned integer representing the size of an ...