MEMORY MANAGEMENT

What do you mean by Memory Management?

• Memory management is the functionality of an operating system which handles or manages primary memory.

• Memory management keeps track of each and every memory location either it is allocated to some process or it is free.

• It checks how much memory is to be allocated to processes. 

• It decides which process will get memory at what time. 

• Memory management provides protection by using two registers, a base register and a limit register. 

• Base register holds the smallest legal physical memory address and the limit register specifies the size of the range.

Instructions and data to memory addresses can be done in following ways
• Compile time -- When it is known at compile time where the process will reside, compile time binding is used to generate the absolute code.
• Load time -- When it is not known at compile time where the process will reside in memory, then the compiler generates relocatable code.
• Execution time -- If the process can be moved during its execution from one memory segment to another, then binding must be delayed to be done at run time