Mmap
In computing, mmap(2) is a POSIX-compliant Unix system call that maps files or devices into memory. It is a method of memory-mapped file I/O. It implements demand paging because file contents are not immediately read from disk and initially use no physical RAM at all. The actual reads from disk are performed after a specific location is accessed, in a lazy manner. After the mapping is no longer needed, the pointers must be unmapped with munmap(2). Protection information—for example, marking mapped regions as executable—can be managed using mprotect(2), and special treatment can be enforced using madvise(2). In Linux, macOS and the BSDs, mmap can create several types of mappings. Other operating systems may only support a subset of these; for example, shared mappings may not be practical in an operating system without a global VFS or I/O cache. History The original design of memory-mapped files came from the TOPS-20 operating system. mmap and associated systems calls were de ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Memory-mapped File
A memory-mapped file is a segment of virtual memory that has been assigned a direct byte-for-byte correlation with some portion of a file or file-like resource. This resource is typically a file that is physically present on disk, but can also be a device, shared memory object, or other resource that an operating system can reference through a file descriptor. Once present, this correlation between the file and the memory space permits applications to treat the mapped portion as if it were primary memory. History TOPS-20 PMAP An early () implementation of this was the PMAP system call on the DEC-20's TOPS-20 operating system, a feature used by Software House's System-1022 database system. SunOS 4 mmap SunOS 4 introduced Unix's mmap, which permitted programs "to map files into memory." Windows Growable Memory-Mapped Files (GMMF) Two decades after the release of TOPS-20's PMAP, Windows NT was given Growable Memory-Mapped Files (GMMF). Since " function requires a size to be ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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C Dynamic Memory Allocation
C dynamic memory allocation refers to performing manual memory management for dynamic memory allocation in the C programming language via a group of functions in the C standard library, namely , , , and . The C++ programming language includes these functions; however, the operators and provide similar functionality and are recommended by that language's authors. Still, there are several situations in which using new/delete is not applicable, such as garbage collection code or performance-sensitive code, and a combination of malloc and placement new may be required instead of the higher-level new operator. Many different implementations of the actual memory allocation mechanism, used by , are available. Their performance varies in both execution time and required memory. Rationale The C programming language manages memory statically, automatically, or dynamically. Static-duration variables are allocated in main memory, usually along with the executable code of t ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Inter-process Communication
In computer science, interprocess communication (IPC) is the sharing of data between running Process (computing), processes in a computer system. Mechanisms for IPC may be provided by an operating system. Applications which use IPC are often categorized as client–server model, clients and servers, where the client requests data and the server responds to client requests. Many applications are both clients and servers, as commonly seen in distributed computing. IPC is very important to the design process for microkernels and nanokernels, which reduce the number of functionalities provided by the kernel. Those functionalities are then obtained by communicating with servers via IPC, leading to a large increase in communication when compared to a regular monolithic kernel. IPC interfaces generally encompass variable analytic framework structures. These processes ensure compatibility between the multi-vector protocols upon which IPC models rely. An IPC mechanism is either Synchroni ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Page Cache
In computing, a page cache, sometimes also called disk cache, is a transparent cache for the pages originating from a secondary storage device such as a hard disk drive (HDD) or a solid-state drive (SSD). The operating system keeps a page cache in otherwise unused portions of the main memory (RAM), resulting in quicker access to the contents of cached pages and overall performance improvements. A page cache is implemented in kernels with the paging memory management, and is mostly transparent to applications. Usually, all physical memory not directly allocated to applications is used by the operating system for the page cache. Since the memory would otherwise be idle and is easily reclaimed when applications request it, there is generally no associated performance penalty and the operating system might even report such memory as "free" or "available". When compared to main memory, hard disk drive read/writes are slow and random accesses require expensive disk seeks; as a ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Lazy Evaluation
In programming language theory, lazy evaluation, or call-by-need, is an evaluation strategy which delays the evaluation of an Expression (computer science), expression until its value is needed (non-strict evaluation) and which avoids repeated evaluations (by the use of Sharing (computer science), sharing). The benefits of lazy evaluation include: * The ability to define control flow (structures) as abstractions instead of Language primitive, primitives. * The ability to define actual infinity, potentially infinite data structures. This allows for more straightforward implementation of some algorithms. * The ability to define partly-defined data structures where some elements are errors. This allows for rapid prototyping. Lazy evaluation is often combined with memoization, as described in Jon Bentley (computer scientist), Jon Bentley's ''Writing Efficient Programs''. After a function's value is computed for that Parameter (computer programming), parameter or set of parameters, th ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Virtual Memory
In computing, virtual memory, or virtual storage, is a memory management technique that provides an "idealized abstraction of the storage resources that are actually available on a given machine" which "creates the illusion to users of a very large (main) memory". The computer's operating system, using a combination of hardware and software, maps memory addresses used by a program, called '' virtual addresses'', into ''physical addresses'' in computer memory. Main storage, as seen by a process or task, appears as a contiguous address space or collection of contiguous segments. The operating system manages virtual address spaces and the assignment of real memory to virtual memory. Address translation hardware in the CPU, often referred to as a memory management unit (MMU), automatically translates virtual addresses to physical addresses. Software within the operating system may extend these capabilities, utilizing, e.g., disk storage, to provide a virtual address space ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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System V
Unix System V (pronounced: "System Five") is one of the first commercial versions of the Unix operating system. It was originally developed by AT&T and first released in 1983. Four major versions of System V were released, numbered 1, 2, 3, and 4. System V Release 4 (SVR4) was commercially the most successful version, being the result of an effort, marketed as ''Unix System Unification'', which solicited the collaboration of the major Unix vendors. It was the source of several common commercial Unix features. System V is sometimes abbreviated to SysV. , the AT&T-derived Unix market is divided between four System V variants: IBM's AIX, Hewlett Packard Enterprise's HP-UX and Oracle's Solaris, plus the free-software illumos forked from OpenSolaris. Overview Introduction System V was the successor to 1982's UNIX System III. While AT&T developed and sold hardware that ran System V, most customers ran a version from a reseller, based on AT&T's reference implementation. A ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Interprocess Communication
In computer science, interprocess communication (IPC) is the sharing of data between running processes in a computer system. Mechanisms for IPC may be provided by an operating system. Applications which use IPC are often categorized as clients and servers, where the client requests data and the server responds to client requests. Many applications are both clients and servers, as commonly seen in distributed computing. IPC is very important to the design process for microkernels and nanokernels, which reduce the number of functionalities provided by the kernel. Those functionalities are then obtained by communicating with servers via IPC, leading to a large increase in communication when compared to a regular monolithic kernel. IPC interfaces generally encompass variable analytic framework structures. These processes ensure compatibility between the multi-vector protocols upon which IPC models rely. An IPC mechanism is either synchronous or asynchronous. Synchronization pri ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Virtual Memory
In computing, virtual memory, or virtual storage, is a memory management technique that provides an "idealized abstraction of the storage resources that are actually available on a given machine" which "creates the illusion to users of a very large (main) memory". The computer's operating system, using a combination of hardware and software, maps memory addresses used by a program, called '' virtual addresses'', into ''physical addresses'' in computer memory. Main storage, as seen by a process or task, appears as a contiguous address space or collection of contiguous segments. The operating system manages virtual address spaces and the assignment of real memory to virtual memory. Address translation hardware in the CPU, often referred to as a memory management unit (MMU), automatically translates virtual addresses to physical addresses. Software within the operating system may extend these capabilities, utilizing, e.g., disk storage, to provide a virtual address space ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Mach (kernel)
Mach () is an operating system kernel developed at Carnegie Mellon University by Richard Rashid and Avie Tevanian to support operating system research, primarily distributed and parallel computing. Mach is often considered one of the earliest examples of a microkernel. However, not all versions of Mach are microkernels. Mach's derivatives are the basis of the operating system kernel in GNU Hurd and of Apple's XNU kernel used in macOS, iOS, iPadOS, tvOS, and watchOS. The project at Carnegie Mellon ran from 1985 to 1994, ending with Mach 3.0, which is a true microkernel. Mach was developed as a replacement for the kernel in the BSD version of Unix, not requiring a new operating system to be designed around it. Mach and its derivatives exist within several commercial operating systems. These include all using the XNU operating system kernel which incorporates an earlier non-microkernel Mach as a major component. The Mach virtual memory management system was also adopted in ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Demand Paging
In computer operating systems, demand paging (as opposed to anticipatory paging) is a method of virtual memory management. In a system that uses demand paging, the operating system copies a disk page into physical memory only when an attempt is made to access it and that page is not already in memory (i.e., if a page fault occurs). It follows that a process begins execution with none of its pages in physical memory, and triggers many page faults until most of its working set of pages are present in physical memory. This is an example of a lazy loading technique. Basic concept Demand paging only brings pages into memory when an executing process demands them. This is often referred to as lazy loading, as only those pages demanded by the process are swapped from secondary storage to main memory. Contrast this to pure swapping, where all memory for a process is swapped from secondary storage to main memory when the process starts up or resumes execution. Commonly, to achieve this ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Paging
In computer operating systems, memory paging is a memory management scheme that allows the physical Computer memory, memory used by a program to be non-contiguous. This also helps avoid the problem of memory fragmentation and requiring compaction to reduce fragmentation. Paging is often combined with the related technique of allocating and freeing Page (computer memory), ''page frames'' and storing pages on and retrieving them from Computer data storage#Secondary storage, secondary storage in order to allow the aggregate size of the address spaces to exceed the physical memory of the system. For historical reasons, this technique is sometimes referred to as ''swapping''. When combined with virtual memory, it is known as Virtual memory#Paged virtual memory, ''paged virtual memory''. In this scheme, the operating system retrieves data from secondary storage in Block (data storage), blocks of the same size (pages). Paging is an important part of virtual memory implementations in ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |