I got this question during an exam last week and I still cannot figure out how to get to the correct answer.
I think that first, the 8MiB block of data can at worst be saved on 2049 pages (8MiB/4KiB + 1 due to the data not starting at the start of a page). But that is basically all I have as I get confused and tangled up in the question every time.
How many page faults may occur at the most when copying a contiguous 8
MiB block of memory (i.e., from memory to memory) under the following
assumptions:
32-bit virtual address space, 4 KiB pages, three-level page tables
1st page table level has only 4 8-byte items, 2nd and 3rd page table levels have 512 of 8-byte items in each paging table
there is enough free frames, there will be no page replacement
the first level paging table is always in the memory
OS implements a very simple algorithm which allocates only one frame during each page failure
we do not take into account potential page faults caused by instruction fetching (we expect the code is already in the memory)
Related
I know many people have already asked similar question on this platform, but still I have confusion on this. Please clarify.
If my program needs only 5 page frames initially to store all its things in RAM, it needs only 5 page table entries, right? Or, does it still need 2^20 page table entries?
RAM : 32-bit addressable.
Page Size : 4096 bytes.
Or, Due to stack/heap of a process, it is assumed that a process any time can acquire page frames upto 2^20 ? and increasing/decreasing of page table will become a costly operation. Hence, giving a place to store maximum of 2^20 page frame numbers for each process is a good idea.
I was reading here and at the problem 3, exercise 2 he states:
The top-level page table should not assume that 2nd level page tables are page-aligned. So, we store full physical addresses there. Fortunately, we do not need control bits. So, each entry is at least 44 bits (6 bytes for byte-aligned, 8 bytes for word-aligned). Each top-level page table is therefore 256*6 = 1536 bytes (256 * 8 = 2048 bytes).
So, why does first layer can't assume page aligned 2nd layer?
Since it's presumes that the memory is not allocated in page granularity, wouldn't that make the allocation significantly more complicated?
I have tried btw to read the lectures of the course but they are that comprehensive.
As far as my understanding goes, the CPU always generates a virtual address that is made-up of 2 parts- the page number and the page offset. The page number is used for indexing the page table (the corresponding mapping gives the starting address of the frame in the RAM). Now, please consider the following questions. Consider that the word size of the machine is 4 bytes, and the page size is equal to the frame size = 4096 bytes.
Supposing that the page number is 4 and the offset is 3. Then Page 4 in the logical memory maps to frame 8 in the virtual memory. This means that the starting address of the frame is 8.
Now, each frame will contain 4096/4= 1024 words. Does the offset imply for a word inside the frame, since the machine will always fetch a word at a time? What I mean is that does it mean the 3rd word in frame 8?
Is the particular word given to the CPU, or the entire frame? If former, then why does everyone talk about transfer in terms of frames and pages rather than words?
Suppose a page fault occurs. What this means is that the particular page in not in memory. Does it mean that the physical address mapped contains some other page? Does the mapping even exist in such a case when the invalid bit is 1.
Can someone clear-up things for me? One moment I seem to get it, and the very next, I get into a maze.
The key point of paging is that it deals with "chunks" of memory.
It is a map, a function, that translates virtual addresses into physical addresses but not on an address-by-address base. Rather, a "chunk" of continuous virtual addresses is translated together into another continuous "chunk" of, now physical, addresses.
You can think of it as a "translation" or "shuffle" of "chunks" of memory.
The correct term for "chunk" is page.
If try to do a sample mapping you can see that each page contains a set of addresses that all have a peculiarity: their lower bits don't change when passing from virtual to physical. The upper bits instead are arbitrary.
This dichotomy of the address value defines the Offset and Page/Frame number.
The offset is the part of the address value that don't undergo any translation.
In a page of 4KiB there are 4096 addresses, each one with its offset, so the offset has size log2(4096) = log2(212) = 12 * log2(2) = 12 bits.
In short the page size determines the offset size.
It is necessary to break the memory into pages and not words or byte, or in another view it is necessary to group the addresses to translate into pages.
Without pages, the metadata used for the translation, in jargon the page tables of various level, would occupy more memory that the one that under translation!
Offsets are relative to their page/frame thanks to the way their are defined: the offset 1024 (in hex 400h) in the frame 8 means the address 8000h + 400h = 8400h; if the page is mapped to the frame 12 the offset 1024 is still 1024 bytes after the beginning of the frame, 0c000h + 400h = 0c400h.
Being an address, an offset usually denotes a byte, event in architecture where bytes are not addressable. However this is not a standard convention, to know if an offset denotes a word or a byte (e.g. if offset 10 of frame 0 is the byte 40 or the byte 10) check the architecture manual. The first sections are usually dedicated to establishing a terminology to use throughout the book.
Paging happens before the CPU accesses the memory, you can think of it as an high level process. The unit that accesses the memory/bus is mostly unaware of it, as such the CPU read the data that the instruction is telling it to read (a word, a byte, and so on).
People talk about moving a page because a page is the smallest unit that can be characterized.
You can mark a page as non present, but not a word. You can make a page read-only but not a word.
If you need to map, say 16 bytes, you still need to map a whole page since 16 bytes are not characterizable. So we might as well read a whole page.
When a page-fault occurs it means that the page accessed is, at any level in the page-tables, non present.
This may mean a wide range of things, from the fact that the Present bit has been simply toggled (with the page still there), to the fact that the page has been saved to disk and zero-ed in memory.
Since the mapping function is total, meaning that every value is a valid value, the CPU need a way to know when a value is not valid.
The Present bit does this: tell the CPU that a translation must not be performed and that an exception must be raised instead.
The OS use this exception to be notified of when a page is needed, it doesn't need to reassign the mapping to another page or zero the memory.
When people say that a page is removed they mean that it is removed from the mapping, all modern OSes also zero-d the page to prevent leaking of information to other processes though.
So if a physical frame is not mapped it doesn't mean that another page in another process is mapping it, it simply mean that that range of addresses cannot be accessed.
As said above there are a lot of reasons for an OS to do this, including protection.
You have things a bit backwards. The operating system defines a logical address space for each process. The logic address space is divided into units of memory called PAGES.
The operating system logically maps the pages of the address to either physical page frames or secondary storage If the operating system maps pages to secondary storage then is using virtual memory.
In ye olde days all systems that did logical memory translation always did virtual memory mappings to secondary storage. That is why the terms virtual memory translation and logical memory translation are often conflated. These days it is becoming increasingly common to have logical translation without virtual memory.
All address accesses through a process are to logical addresses. The processor translates the logical address to page frames. If logical page exists but is mapped to secondary storage, accessing that page triggers a page fault. The operating system must handle the fault, remap the logical/virtual page to a physical page frame; load the data from secondary storage to the page frame; and restart the instructions.
Supposing that the page number is 4 and the offset is 3. Then Page 4 in the logical memory maps to frame 8 in the virtual memory. This means that the starting address of the frame is 8.
This make no sense. A logical page is virtual when it is mapped to secondary storage. If the page number is 4 the 4th logical page can:
a) have no mapping at all (access violation)
b) map to a physical page frame
c) map to a secondary storage (virtual memory)
Now, each frame will contain 4096/4= 1024 words. Does the offset imply for a word inside the frame, since the machine will always fetch a word at a time? What I mean is that does it mean the 3rd word in frame 8?
In nearly all (if not all) current processors there are no memory words; only bytes. The system bus fetches memory and the "word size" of the bus can be (and often is) different from the "word size" of the processor.
Is the particular word given to the CPU, or the entire frame? If former, then why does everyone talk about transfer in terms of frames and pages rather than words?
The process sees transfers in sizes related to the instruction being executed. The operand size can be larger or smaller than the machine word. The bus transfers data to memory and that size is frequently different from the word size of the machine.
Suppose a page fault occurs. What this means is that the particular page in not in memory. Does it mean that the physical address mapped contains some other page? Does the mapping even exist in such a case when the invalid bit is 1.
I gave the three possibilities for logical page mappings above. How those are indicated are system specific. Some systems use 2 bits to indicate a, b, or c. Others use a single bit to indicate (b) and require the operating system to determine whether it's (a) or (c).
Whether or not a page fault is triggered depended upon the state of the page table.
Generally a page fault means that the page frame is not in memory. However, it is often possible for the physical page frame to be in memory but not mapped in the page table (a soft page fault). (This occurs when the operating system has unmapped page frames to free some up but has not reallocated them.) In this case, the operating system simply needs to update the page table to point to the page frame and restart the instruction (no need to load from secondary storage).
In the answer(in the book), I am not getting the following-
"The starting address of an n-bit page frame is a multiple of 2^n. Thus, the bit pattern of the frame's starting address consists of the frame number followed by n 0's."
Please explain.
You need another book.
The starting address of an n-bit page frame is a multiple of 2^n. Thus, the bit pattern of the frame's starting address consists of the frame number followed by n 0's."
That's nonsense or at least partial nonsense. It presumes that page frames are addressed, rather than indexed.
In a real mode, memory is addressed, but there are no page frames. When logical memory translation is used, page frames are indexed on every system I have seen.
If page frames were addressed as suggested in your book,
1) A system could not have more physical memory than can be addressed using the CPU's word size; and
2) The page tables would be unnecessarily large because they would have to account for both the full address of the page frame AND any overhead bits.
Normally, page tables use the spare bits from the page size for page management overhead.
IF the first byte in a page frame were to be accessed in real mode, then such a byte would address would be a multiple of the page size (which is always a power of 2). Thus, the lower bits in the address would be some string of zeros. But in virtual/logical translation page frames do not have addresses.
I do not understand why these operating systems books insist on confusing the subject.
Lets consider that size of page is equal to 1 KB. One entry in table
takes 2B. Table of pages takes not more than one page (so <= 1KB).
Can we conclude that size of operational memory is <= 512 KB ?
A correct answer is No, however I can't understand it. For me, answer is yes - look at my reasoning at show me where I am wrong, please.
Table contains <=1024B/2B=512=2^9 entries in table of pages. Size of page is 1024B=2^10B, so offset takes not more than <=10 bits. Number of page takes <=9 bits - because we have 512=2^9 entries. Hence, 9+10=19. Therefore <=2^19 bits make it possible to address <= 2^19 B=2^9KB=512KB.
Where am I wrong?
A page table entry is 2B, so a table entry can point to one of 2^16 physical pages. That's 2*16 kiB (because pages are 1kB). So a kernel can make use of up to 65536 kiB (64MiB) of physical memory.
This assumes that the entire page table entry (PTE) is a physical page number. That can work if the position of a PTE within the page table associates it with a virtual address. i.e. 9 bits of a virtual address are used as an index into the PT, to select a PTE.
We can't assume that the machine does work this way, but similarly we can't assume that it doesn't, until we have more information.
Given just the info in the question, we can conclude:
Usable physical memory can be anything up to 65536kiB.
Up to 512 virtual pages can be mapped at once (512kiB).
Not much else! Many possibilities are open.
A more likely design would have a valid/invalid bit in each PTE.
If a PTE's contents (rather than its location) indicate which virtual page it maps, it would be possible to map a large virtual address space onto very few physical pages. This address space would necessarily be sparsely mapped, but the kernel could give a process the illusion of having a lot of active mappings by keeping a separate table of what the mappings should be.
So on a page fault, the kernel checks to see if the page should have been mapped. If so, it puts the mapping in the PTE and resumes the process. (This kind of thing happens in real OSes, and it's called a minor page fault.)
In this design, the kernel's use of the page table to hold a subset of the real mappings would be analogous to a software-managed TLB. (Of course, this architecture could have a non-coherent TLB that requires invalidation after every PTE modification, so this would probably perform horribly).