Preview

Importance of Memory Management

Better Essays
Open Document
Open Document
900 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Importance of Memory Management
Importance of Memory Management in Operating Systems
Leonardo Negron
University of Phoenix
Author Note
“Computers are stupid. They can only do three things: add two numbers, compare two numbers and REMEMBER” –Philip Mumford, High School Computer teacher
Abstract
Computers have been around since the dawn of mankind in the form of our brains. In the past few hundred years we have been creating computers to help us handle our increasing demands for automation tasks. From simple computers that can do one thing to complex interconnected systems that can do so much they are able to truly multitask. This multitasking requires proper memory management and for that we have software called an Operating System, whose job is to manage the environment in which automated tasks will be conducted.
Keywords: operating systems, memory, random access memory, memory management
Importance of Memory Management in Operating Systems
The Operating System (OS) is a complex program designed to provide functionality and boundaries for programs that will perform tasks. Their job is to do many things from schedule, to protection to allocation. Overall the OS is a form of general manager that enhances the productivity of the programs meant to run in it. Although not all computers need an operating system, complex computers will need some form of memory management agent. Handling memory is a key part of this process and thus a very important part of the overall goal of whatever program runs on it.
Managing Memory
When building an OS a designer has to be able to perform several steps before, during and after. First there must be a discovery phase. The OS must know what hardware it is dealing with. With this knowledge it can move to allocate the area it will use for its own processes and thus protect it from accidentally being used by other non-operation processes. Once it knows this it is ready to run programs. In a way the same rules apply. The program will ask for



References: Stallings, W. (2012). Operating systems, Internals and design principles (7th ed.). Retrieved from The University of Phoenix eBook Collection database. Silberschatz, A., Galvin, P. B., & Gagne, G. (2013). Operating System Concepts Essentials (2nd ed.). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons,

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    A computers operating system (OS) is the core of the computer and is more than just software. The OS controls the computer’s memory and processes as well as its hardware and software. It is the brain of the computer. Software applications on the other hand perform a certain task. Ex. Google Chrome provides internet and Adobe allows PDF files to be read (among other things). The OS is what makes all of these applications work successfully and accomplish whatever the application is designed to accomplish.…

    • 816 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Week 5 Pos 355

    • 2010 Words
    • 9 Pages

    Operating systems were not in existence before the 1960s. The definition of operating systems is a program designed to run other programs on the computer and is the most important program. In the past, computers were built to execute a series of single task similar to a calculator. In the 1960s came the MCP (Master Control Program) for the B5000 mainframe computer created by the company Burroughs/Unisys. The MCP was the first OS written exclusively in a high-level language. As the years progressed, OS giants were starting to form such as Windows, Linux, and Mac. In, this paper, these 3 tech OS giants will be examined thoroughly while covering memory management, process management, file management, and security.…

    • 2010 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Nt1330 Unit 1 Assignment

    • 4639 Words
    • 19 Pages

    An operating system (OS) is an interface between hardware and user which is responsible for the management and coordination of activities and the sharing of the resources of the computer that acts as a host for computing applications run on the machine. As a host, one of the purposes of an operating system is to handle the details of the operation of the hardware. This relieves application programs from having to manage these details and makes it easier to write applications. Almost all computers (including handheld computers,desktop computers, supercomputers, video game consoles) as well as some robots, domestic appliances (dishwashers, washing machines), and portable…

    • 4639 Words
    • 19 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Silberschatz, A., Galvin, P. B., & Gagne, G. (2009). Operating system concepts: Update (8th ed.). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley & Sons.…

    • 669 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Memory management is an important characteristic of an operating system. Main memory is divided into two parts one for resident programs, and the other for the program currently in use. The user part must be subdivided to accommodate multiple processes (Stallings, 2012). When a few processes are in the memory then much of the time all of the processes will have to wait for input /output and the processor will be idle. According to Stallings (2012),. The requirements that memory management is supposed to satisfy are Relocation, Protection, Sharing, Logical organization, and Physical…

    • 573 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Open vs Closed Systems

    • 1153 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Stallings, W. (2012). Operating systems: Internals and design principles (7th ed.). Retrieved from The University of Phoenix eBook Collection database..…

    • 1153 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    References: Stallings, W. (2012). Operating systems: Internals and design principles (7th ed.). Boston, MA: Prentice Hall.…

    • 392 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Operating System Differences

    • 3058 Words
    • 13 Pages

    This paper will elaborate on the major differences of the main Operating Systems (OS), which are UNIX/Linux, Mac®, Microsoft® Windows®. The areas of discussion for this paper will be on Memory Management, Process Management, File Management, and Security for each operating system. Operating Systems (OS) for a computer is the main processing software program used to allow the computer processor to communicate with the software and hardware I/O devices. Computers as SUN, SUSE use UNIX/Linux operating system, Mac® (Macintosh) computer uses Apple operating system, and Personal Computers (PC) and most business computers use Windows® Microsoft® operating systems.…

    • 3058 Words
    • 13 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Unix vs Windows Networking

    • 3252 Words
    • 14 Pages

    Windows has been dominating for many years in the desktop market, in which Linux/Unix systems have dominated the supercomputer market. The main reason for these slants in markets is the general mission’s of each operating system, or OS. Each OS has a different focus pertaining to stability, ease of use, cost, versatility, profit, and customer support.…

    • 3252 Words
    • 14 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Linex VS Mac VS Windows

    • 2819 Words
    • 12 Pages

    References: Stallings, W. (2012). Operating Sytems: Internals and Design Principles (7th ed.). Retrieved from The Univerisity of Phoenix EBook Collection.…

    • 2819 Words
    • 12 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Operating System Comparisons

    • 2694 Words
    • 11 Pages

    An important function of the OS is to manage the computer systems memory. Programs, processes, and resource do not simply float around in memory haphazardly. Memory is shared among these processes and resources. Accordingly, managed by the OS is an organized structure of locating processes in computer memory locations. The two primary types of memory controlled by an OS are main memory and virtual memory. Main memory is the location of data moved to the CPU for process execution. Virtual memory is used to swap processes too large to fit completely into main memory. Intended memory management requirements include relocation, protection, sharing, logical organization, and physical organization. Paging permits the physical address space of a process to be noncontiguous. Because paging has advantages over earlier methods it is prominent in most operating systems. Processes are swapped from main memory to virtual memory and back again as needed. The original memory location may not be available at the…

    • 2694 Words
    • 11 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    References: Stallings, W. (2012). Operating Systems: Internals and Design Principles (7th ed.). Retrieved from The University of Phoenix eBook Collection database…

    • 435 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Cis Memory Management

    • 1581 Words
    • 7 Pages

    The purpose of this paper is to show how memory is used in executing programs and its critical support for applications. C++ is a general purpose programming language that runs programs using memory management. Two operating system environments are commonly used in compiling, building and executing C++ applications. These are the windows and UNIX / Linux (or some UNIX / Linux derivative) operating system. In this paper we will explore the implementation of memory management, processes and threads.…

    • 1581 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Linux and UNIX operating systems implement the virtual memory data structure. These operating systems maintain a linked list that represents continuous memory areas having same commit state information and protection parameters. The operating system searches the linked list every time it is required to find out the page having particular location. The data structure of these operating systems maintains the records of addresses mapping onto the applications, protection mode of the memory and the growing direction.…

    • 670 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Some OS routines directly support application programs as they run and thus must be resident. Other transient routines are stored on disk and read into memory only when needed. Fixed-length partitions can also be used to allocate the set amount of memory that a particular program needs to run. Under dynamic memory management, the transient area is treated as a pool of unstructured free space. When the system decides to load a particular program, a region of memory just sufficient to hold the program is allocated from the pool. Using segmentation, programs are divided into independently addressed segments and stored in noncontiguous memory. Paging breaks a program into fixed-length pages.…

    • 7085 Words
    • 29 Pages
    Good Essays

Related Topics