Scribd
Upload
38 views3 pages

Paging

Paging is a memory management technique that allows a computer to use virtual memory by breaking process address space into fixed-size blocks called pages, which correspond to frames in physical memory. It facilitates address translation from logical to physical addresses using a page map table, enabling efficient memory utilization and management. While paging reduces external fragmentation and simplifies swapping, it can lead to internal fragmentation and requires additional memory for the page table.

Uploaded by

gagandeep kaur
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
38 views3 pages

Paging

Paging is a memory management technique that allows a computer to use virtual memory by breaking process address space into fixed-size blocks called pages, which correspond to frames in physical memory. It facilitates address translation from logical to physical addresses using a page map table, enabling efficient memory utilization and management. While paging reduces external fragmentation and simplifies swapping, it can lead to internal fragmentation and requires additional memory for the page table.

Uploaded by

gagandeep kaur
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 3

Paging

A computer can address more memory than the amount physically installed on the system. This
extra memory is actually called virtual memory and it is a section of a hard that's set up to
emulate the computer's RAM. Paging technique plays an important role in implementing virtual
memory.
Paging is a memory management technique in which process address space is broken into
blocks of the same size called pages (size is power of 2, between 512 bytes and 8192 bytes).
The size of the process is measured in the number of pages.
Similarly, main memory is divided into small fixed-sized blocks of (physical) memory
called frames and the size of a frame is kept the same as that of a page to have optimum
utilization of the main memory and to avoid external fragmentation.

Address Translation
Page address is called logical address and represented by page number and the offset.

RAJENDRA KUMAR MAHTO INORMATION TECHNOLOGY DSPMU RANCHI Page 1


Logical Address = Page number + page offset
Frame address is called physical address and represented by a frame number and the offset.
Physical Address = Frame number + page offset
A data structure called page map table is used to keep track of the relation between a page of a
process to a frame in physical memory.

When the system allocates a frame to any page, it translates this logical address into a physical
address and create entry into the page table to be used throughout execution of the program.
When a process is to be executed, its corresponding pages are loaded into any available memory
frames. Suppose you have a program of 8Kb but your memory can accommodate only 5Kb at a
given point in time, then the paging concept will come into picture. When a computer runs out
of RAM, the operating system (OS) will move idle or unwanted pages of memory to secondary
memory to free up RAM for other processes and brings them back when needed by the
program.
This process continues during the whole execution of the program where the OS keeps
removing idle pages from the main memory and write them onto the secondary memory and
bring them back when required by the program.

RAJENDRA KUMAR MAHTO INORMATION TECHNOLOGY DSPMU RANCHI Page 2


Advantages and Disadvantages of Paging
Here is a list of advantages and disadvantages of paging −
 Paging reduces external fragmentation, but still suffer from internal fragmentation.
 Paging is simple to implement and assumed as an efficient memory management
technique.
 Due to equal size of the pages and frames, swapping becomes very easy.
 Page table requires extra memory space, so may not be good for a system having small
RAM.

RAJENDRA KUMAR MAHTO INORMATION TECHNOLOGY DSPMU RANCHI Page 3

You might also like