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Memory Management Differences

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Submitted By bigr95
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Memory Management Differences
Randall Anderson
POS/355
July-27, 2015
Alicia Pearlman

Memory Management Differences
Before anyone can begin to understand the differences between Windows and Linux memory management, one must understand memory management and its requirements in today’s systems. These requirements play a very important part in a computers performance and speed. Both operating systems share some similar characteristics as to how their memory management works, but also differ as to their complexity. Windows is a more complex system where Linux is more simplistic. Stallings states that “Linux shares UNIX characteristics but has its own features and is very complex” (Stallings, 2012,). The architecture of Linux’s virtual memory is one of a three level structure. Page 1 is equivalent to one page. Entries are directed to the page directory and the page must be in the main memory to be active (Stallings, 2012). The middle page directory can be as large as multiple pages. Each entry points to one page of the table. The last is what is known as the page table and it refers to one virtual page of the process. The structure was designed for a 64 bit Alpha processor and is independent.
What is known as the buddy system is used to help Linux increase it efficiency. This system works by splitting and merging pages which are allocated and deallocated in the main memory (Stallings, 2012). Linux uses a page replacement algorithm which deals with the simple clock that ages each Page. Every time a page is accessed, the variable of age increases. An old page is replaced when it has not been used in a long time. The kernel memory allocation that Linux uses manages the main memory page frames this allocates and deallocates frames for the memory management. Linux uses a slab allocation for smaller chunks of memory smaller than a page which makes the system more

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