Module 3 of 5
How the operating system gives every process the illusion of its own large, contiguous address space — and how it keeps that illusion cheap. From the memory hierarchy and address binding through paging, page tables, the TLB, page replacement, and the control of thrashing.
Module overview
Every process believes it owns a large, private, contiguous address space. Nothing about that belief is true at the hardware level: memory is physical, finite, and shared. The gap between the illusion and the reality is bridged by the memory-management subsystem, and this module explains how.
Unit 8 builds the physical side — the hierarchy, address binding, contiguous allocation, fragmentation, and segmentation. Unit 9 builds the virtual side — paging, page tables, the TLB, demand paging, page replacement, and thrashing. Together they give you the vocabulary and the analytical tools to reason about performance in any modern system.
Module learning outcomes
Units
The physical side: hierarchy, binding, loading, contiguous allocation, fragmentation, and segmentation.
The virtual side: paging, page tables, the TLB, demand paging, page faults, replacement, and thrashing.
Laboratory & assessment
| Lab | Topic | Unit |
|---|---|---|
| Lab 7 | Memory Management | Unit 8 |
| Lab 8 | Virtual Memory | Unit 9 |
Lab 8 feeds directly into the Virtual Memory Simulator option in Assignment 2.
Much of this module is quantitative: page-fault rates, effective access times, and replacement-policy hit ratios. Work through the worked examples carefully.