Memory management
Encyclopedia : M : ME : MEM : Memory management
Memory management is the act of managing computer memory. In its simpler forms, this involves providing ways to allocate portions of memory to programs at their request, and freeing it for reuse when no longer needed.
Virtual memory systems separate the memory addresses used by a process from actual physical addresses, allowing separation of processes and increasing the effectively available amount of RAM using disk swapping. The quality of the virtual memory manager can have a big impact on overall system performance.
Garbage collection is the automated allocation and deallocation of computer memory resources for a program. This is generally implemented at the programming language level and is in opposition to manual memory management, the explicit allocation and deallocation of computer memory resources.
In addition to standard memory management, DOS led to the development of programs known as memory managers. These move portions of the operating system outside their normal locations in order to increase the amount of memory available to other applications. Examples are EMM386, which was part of the standard installation in DOS's later versions, and QEMM. These allowed use of memory above the 640 kb barrier, where memory was normally reserved for ROMs, and high and upper memory.
See also
- dynamic memory allocation
- garbage collection
- handle or reference
- page fault
- page table
- paging
- pointer
- virtual memory
- memory management unit
External links
- [The Memory Management Reference]
- [Linux Memory Management]
- [Memory Management For System Programmers]
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