The expected lifetime of “single-address-space” operating systems

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...

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Veröffentlicht in:Performance evaluation review 1994-05, Vol.22 (1), p.161-170
Hauptverfasser: Kotz, David, Crow, Preston
Format: Artikel
Sprache:eng
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Zusammenfassung: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 stable 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 space becomes available.
ISSN:0163-5999
DOI:10.1145/183019.183036