Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
3-15-1996
Technical Report Number
PCS-TR93-198
Abstract
Trends toward shared-memory programming paradigms, large (64-bit) address spaces, and memory-mapped files have led some to propose the use of a single virtual-address space, shared by all processes and processors. Typical proposals require the single address space to contain all process-private data, shared data, and stored files. To simplify management of an address space where stale pointers make it difficult to re-use addresses, some have claimed that a 64-bit address space is sufficiently large that there is no need to ever re-use addresses. Unfortunately, there has been no data to either support or refute these claims, or to aid in the design of appropriate address-space management policies. In this paper, we present the results of extensive kernel-level tracing of the workstations in our department, and discuss the implications for single-address-space operating systems. We found that single-address-space systems will not outgrow the available address space, but only if reasonable space-allocation policies are used, and only if the system can adapt as larger address spaces become available.
Dartmouth Digital Commons Citation
Kotz, David and Crow, Preston, "The Expected Lifetime of "Single-Address-Space" Operating Systems" (1996). Computer Science Technical Report PCS-TR93-198. https://digitalcommons.dartmouth.edu/cs_tr/86
Comments
The on-line version is a revision of March 15, 1996. An earlier revised version appeared in SIGMETRICS '94. The original technical report is not available on-line.