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Memory Management

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6 articles

  • 01
    Buffer Cache

    Why a kernel keeps recently read or written disk blocks in memory, indexed by device and block number, and what happens to a write between being issued and actually reaching disk.

  • 02
    Heap Allocators

    Turning a block of raw memory into a general-purpose allocator with malloc-style semantics.

  • 03
    Paging & Virtual Memory

    How page tables map virtual addresses to physical memory, and why every process needs its own.

  • 04
    Physical Memory

    Tracking which physical page frames are free, using structures like a bitmap or free list.

  • 05
    The Slab Allocator

    Fixed-size object pools that eliminate both the fragmentation and the free-list-walking cost a general-purpose heap allocator has for frequently allocated structures.

  • 06
    TLB Shootdown

    Why changing a page table entry on one CPU doesn't invalidate the same translation cached in another CPU's TLB, and the IPI-based protocol that forces it to.