Understanding Memory

Our context for this discussion is the AICT Linux Cluster, which runs 64-bit GNU/Linux on AMD Opteron hardware. If you have a comment or question about the material presented, please send a note to research.support@ualberta.ca.

Contents

• Introduction
• Programs and Processes
• Storage Class and Scope
• Program Size
• Memory Map
• Call Stack
• Page Table
• Libraries
• Memory Limits
• Memory Allocation
• Implementation Details
• References

Introduction

Under Linux, all programs run in a virtual memory environment. If a C programmer prints the value of a pointer (never necessary in practice), the result will be a virtual memory address. In Fortran, although pointers are not a standard feature, virtual memory addressing is implicit in every variable reference and subroutine call.

Of course, a program's code and data actually reside in real physical memory. Therefore, each virtual memory address is mapped by the operating system to a physical memory address in a structure known as the page table (see Figure 1). So, for example, to retrieve or update the value of a variable, a program must first acquire the variable's real memory address by looking up the associated virtual memory address in the page table. Fortunately, this step is handled transparently by Linux. Optimized code in the Linux kernel and specialized circuitry in the CPU combine to make this a reasonably efficient operation. Nevertheless, you may wonder why do it at all.

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