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Explain the effect of page size on performance of Operating System.
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Paging

  • Paging is a memory management mechanism used to access processes from the secondary storage into the main memory in the form of pages.
  • Paging divides each process in the form of pages.
  • The main memory is divided into small fixed-size blocks of physical memory, which are called frames.
  • The basic idea behind the paging is to remove the external fragmentation and gain faster access to the data.
  • The size of a frame should be kept the same as that of a page to have maximum utilization of the main memory and to avoid external fragmentation.

PageTable

Effect of Page Size on Performance of the OS

  • In paging, the number of frames is always equal to the size of memory divided by the page size.
  • So, an increase in page size means a decrease in the number of available frames.
  • Having fewer frames will increase the number of page faults, because it provides less freedom in page replacement strategies.
  • Large page sizes also waste space due to Internal Fragmentation.
  • Large page size also draws in more memory per fault. Hence, the number of faults may decrease if there is limited contention.
  • Larger pages also reduce the number of TLB misses.
  • Small Page size increases the number of pages as well as the size of a page table.
  • Hence large page size is preferred most of the time.
  • But it is not fixed, sometimes a small page size is preferred or sometimes a larger page size is preferred.
  • It is dependent on the nature of the problem or system requirements.
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