One Minute Evaluations for 28-30 October

CS 438 - Operating Systems Concepts

• Topic: Memory.

• Topic: We learned about memory management.

  Question: Is there a difference between high memory and low memory in monoprogramming systems?

  One minute response: By "monoprogramming systems" I'm guessing you mean DOS. Keeping in mind that I know nothing about DOS, low memory, which refers to the lower 640 kbytes of a 20-bit (1 mbyte) address space, is shared between DOS and user applications. I've seen high memory refer to the remaining 384 kbytes, and I've also seen it refer to the top 64 kbytes of the remaining 384 kbytes. In either case the remaining 384 kbytes is reserved for system use.

  This question also presents us with an opportunity to appreciate once again on the genius that is Bill Gates, this time as reflected in what is probably his most famous quote: "640K ought to be enough for anybody." (1981).

• Topic: Memory management.

• Topic: We talked about memory management, memory managers.

  Question: Is the progression of techniques we speak about mostly theoretical and a means of understanding, or have most of them actually been used at one time?

  One minute response: Both. Progress is not as linear as I'm presenting it, but it is roughly chronological. All these techniques remain in use today.

• Topic: Free list and fragmentation fixes.

• Topic: Partitioning of memory; memory managers/management.

• Topic: Memory management.

• Topic: This week we discussed the basic functions of the memory manager in mono- and multi-programmed systems.

• Topic: Memory, virtual memory, fragmentation, and such.

  Question: Warum ist der Uhr Kaput?

• Topic: We talked about memory management.

  Question: Will the weather ever go back to the way it was on Monday?

• Topic: Program allocation in memory. Deallocation, fragmentation.

• Topic: Linker loader.

  Question: Is there such a thing as a loader linker?

  One minute response: Yes, although with a majority of systems using dynamic libraries, linker-loaders are not as important as the once were.

This page last modified on 16 July 2003.