Processes and Memory Organisation

CODE(静态存储区域)

• Also known as the TEXT Segment
• Usually starts at or near address 0 and does not change size during the lifetime of the process
• Contains:
  
  • the machine instructions for the problem

STACK

• Used to pass data between functions, and to store temporary variables local to a given routine
• The stack often starts at a very high address and grows torwards smaller addresses (this may seem to waste a large amount of space. However, it does not, because the use of virtual memory means that unused addresses below the stack do not need to be mapped in memory)

HEAP

• Dynamic memory which allocated by the process at run time(the most complicated type of memory)
• Usually allocated starting just beyond the end of the code segment, and grows up in memory towards the stack
• The end of heap is sometimes called the process break point (usually using malloc()/free() to manage this task)

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Stack vs Heap Pros and Cons

Stack

• very fast access
• don’t have to explicitly de-allocate variables
• space is managed efficiently by CPU, memory will not become fragmented
• local variables only
• limit on stack size (OS-dependent)
• variables cannot be resized

Heap

• variables can be accessed globally
• no limit on memory size
• (relatively) slower access
• no guaranteed efficient use of space, memory may become fragmented overtime as blocks of memory are allocated, then freed
• you must manage memory (you’re in charge of allocating and freeing variables)
• variables can be resized using realloc()