Welcome to the Memory Management Simulator!
Step back in time to the era of Windows 98 and delve into the fascinating world of operating system memory management. This interactive simulator allows you to visualize and understand classic memory allocation strategies in action.
Ready to explore? Select an algorithm from the navigation menu above to begin a simulation and see how memory is efficiently allocated!
What is Memory Management?
Memory management is a crucial function of an operating system that handles and supervises computer's primary memory. It allocates memory space to processes and deallocates it when no longer needed, ensuring efficient use of resources and preventing conflicts between different programs. Effective memory management is vital for system stability, performance, and multitasking capabilities.
Algorithms in this Simulator:
- First Fit: This algorithm scans memory from the beginning and allocates the first contiguous memory block large enough to satisfy the request. It's simple and fast but can lead to external fragmentation.
- Best Fit: This algorithm searches the entire memory for the smallest available contiguous memory block that is large enough to satisfy the request. It aims to minimize wasted space but can be slower due to the search.
- Next Fit: A variation of First Fit, Next Fit starts searching for a suitable block from where the previous search ended, rather than from the beginning of memory. This can lead to a more even distribution of memory but might also result in more fragmentation.
- Worst Fit: This algorithm allocates the largest available contiguous memory block to a process. The idea is that allocating the largest block will leave a larger remaining free block, which might be useful for larger future requests. However, it often leads to many small, unusable fragments.
- Paging: A non-contiguous memory allocation technique where physical memory is divided into fixed-size blocks called "frames," and logical memory is divided into same-size blocks called "pages." Processes are loaded into available frames, and a page table keeps track of where each page is stored. This technique primarily tackles external fragmentation, but introduces internal fragmentation.
- Segmentation: A memory management technique that divides a program into variable-sized logical units called "segments." Each segment corresponds to a logical part of the program (e.g., code, data, stack). Segmentation allows programs to be loaded into non-contiguous memory blocks, promoting modularity and protection, but it can suffer from external fragmentation.