Memory management requirements

"Memory management is the process of controlling and coordinating computer memory, assigning portions called blocks to various running programs to optimize overall system performance. Memory management resides in hardware, in the OS (operating system), and in programs and applications"(Techtarget, 2012). The requirements for memory management consist of relocation, protection, sharing, logical organization, and physical organization. Relocation consists to use the main memory that is available between the different processes. For the programmer, it is not always possible to know beforehand which programs will be in the main memory when running the program. Also, the programmer would like to exchange the processes in and out to make best use of the processor. The memory management in the operating system needs to be able to relocate programs in the memory and handle addresses, and references in the code of the program. That way always pointing to the correct location in the memory. Protection consists to protect the process against interference, and malicious intentions from other process intentionally or by accident. Also, other processes should not have access to reference memory locations in any process without permission. A user process does not have access to any segment of the operating system. Luckily, the mechanisms that support relocation also hold up the protection requirement. Sharing consists of any security system needs to allow multiples processes to have access to the same segment of the main memory. The memory management system needs to allow restricted access to shared segments of the memory without compromising necessary security. Logical organization consists in the division of the main memory in different segments. There are two ways a main memory in logical organization can be organized as a one-dimensional or a linear. The address space is of a series of words or bytes. Mainly programmers create programs using modules, some of this