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A process can store data in memory-mapped files on memory-backed file systems, such as the tmpfs file system or file systems on a RAM drive, and map files into and out of the address space as needed. A set of processes may still depend upon the enhanced security features page-based isolation may bring to a multitasking environment.
Pages in the page cache modified after being brought in are called dirty pages. [5] Since non-dirty pages in the page cache have identical copies in secondary storage (e.g. hard disk drive or solid-state drive), discarding and reusing their space is much quicker than paging out application memory, and is often preferred over flushing the dirty pages into secondary storage and reusing their space.
The unified page cache operates on units of the smallest page size supported by the CPU (4 KiB in ARMv8, x86 and x86-64) with some pages of the next larger size (2 MiB in x86-64) called "huge pages" by Linux. The pages in the page cache are divided in an "active" set and an "inactive" set. Both sets keep a LRU list of pages.
A system with a smaller page size uses more pages, requiring a page table that occupies more space. For example, if a 2 32 virtual address space is mapped to 4 KiB (2 12 bytes) pages, the number of virtual pages is 2 20 = (2 32 / 2 12). However, if the page size is increased to 32 KiB (2 15 bytes), only 2 17 pages are required. A multi-level ...
Thrashing occurs when there are too many pages in memory, and each page refers to another page. Real memory reduces its capacity to contain all the pages, so it uses 'virtual memory'. When each page in execution demands that page that is not currently in real memory (RAM) it places some pages on virtual memory and adjusts the required page on RAM.
In this case the page is paged out to a secondary store located on a medium such as a hard disk drive (this secondary store, or "backing store", is often called a swap partition if it is a disk partition, or a swap file, swapfile or page file if it is a file). When this happens the page needs to be taken from disk and put back into physical memory.
A terminal pager, paging program or simply pager is a computer program used to view (but not modify) the contents of a text file moving down the file one line or one screen at a time. Some, but not all, pagers allow movement up a file. [ 1 ]
In computer operating systems, demand paging (as opposed to anticipatory paging) is a method of virtual memory management. In a system that uses demand paging, the operating system copies a disk page into physical memory only when an attempt is made to access it and that page is not already in memory (i.e., if a page fault occurs).