Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
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.
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.
Windows 95, Windows 98 and Windows Me use a similar file, and the settings for it are located under Control Panel → System → Performance tab → Virtual Memory. Windows automatically sets the size of the page file to start at 1.5× the size of physical memory, and expand up to 3× physical memory if necessary.
By reducing the I/O activity caused by paging requests, virtual memory compression can produce overall performance improvements. The degree of performance improvement depends on a variety of factors, including the availability of any compression co-processors, spare bandwidth on the CPU, speed of the I/O channel, speed of the physical memory, and the compressibility of the physical memory ...
The brk and sbrk calls dynamically change the amount of space allocated for the heap segment of the calling process. The change is made by resetting the program break of the process, which determines the maximum space that can be allocated. The program break is the address of the first location beyond the current end of the data region.
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.
Many Unix-like systems as well as Microsoft Windows implement a function called alloca for dynamically allocating stack memory in a way similar to the heap-based malloc. A compiler typically translates it to inlined instructions manipulating the stack pointer, similar to how variable-length arrays are handled. [4]
Illustration of cache coloring. Left is virtual memory spaces, center is the physical memory space, and right is the CPU cache.. A physically indexed CPU cache is designed such that addresses in adjacent physical memory blocks take different positions ("cache lines") in the cache, but this is not the case when it comes to virtual memory; when virtually adjacent but not physically adjacent ...