Dynamic Loading in OS: Quiz and Flashcards

What is the role of the memory-management unit (MMU) in a computer system?

What is dynamic loading in the context of memory management?

What are shared libraries in the context of memory management?

What is memory-binding in the context of memory management?

What is dynamic linking in the context of memory management?

What is the difference between a logical address and a physical address?

What happens during a page fault in the context of memory management?

What is the purpose of a TLB (Translation Lookaside Buffer) in the context of memory management?

What is demand paging in the context of memory management?

What is thrashing in the context of memory management?

Dynamic Loading

The entire program does not need to be in memory to execute
All routines are kept on disk in relocatable load format
No special support from the operating system is required
Routine is not loaded until it is called
Better memory-space utilization; unused routine is never loaded

Dynamic Linking

Static linking: system libraries and program code combined by the loader into the binary program image
Dynamic linking: linking postponed until execution time
A small piece of code, stub, used to locate the appropriate memory-resident library routine
Stub replaces itself with the address of the routine, and executes the routine
Dynamic linking is particularly useful for libraries, also known as shared libraries

Basic Hardware/ Memory Protection

User processes must be restricted to access memory locations that "belong" to that particular process
Dynamic partitioning reduces external fragmentation by merging free memory into one large block, also called defragmentation

Paging

A memory management scheme that eliminates the need for contiguous allocation of physical memory
Divides each process into pages and the main memory into frames
Pages of the process are brought into main memory only when required, otherwise they reside in secondary storage
Frame size should be kept the same as page size to maximize main memory utilization and avoid external fragmentation

Learn about dynamic loading in operating systems, where the relocation register is used to add a value to every address generated by a user process when sent to memory. This method allows for better memory-space utilization by loading routines only when they are called.