Operating Systems · Memory virtualization

Free-space memory allocation

How the OS carves up physical memory among processes, and tracks the resulting free space.

Also known as: segmentation, dynamic partitioning, external fragmentation.

Start a lesson on Free-space memory allocation

Learn first

• Address spaces: Each process's private view of memory, starting at zero, that the OS maps onto real physical RAM.

Related topics

• Paging: Splitting memory into fixed-size pages so a process's address space doesn't need to sit in one contiguous block.