Page Replacement

Notes(from here)

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Local vs. global replacement

When a process incurs a page fault, a local page replacement algorithm selects for replacement some page that belongs to that same process (or a group of processes sharing a memory partition). A global replacement algorithm is free to select any page in memory.

Local page replacement assumes some form of memory partitioning that determines how many pages are to be assigned to a given process or a group of processes. Most popular forms of partitioning are fixed partitioning and balanced set algorithms based on the working set model. The advantage of local page replacement is its scalability: each process can handle its page faults independently without contending for some shared global data structure.

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FIFO

The simplest page-replacement algorithm is a FIFO algorithm. The first-in, first-out (FIFO) page replacement algorithm is a low-overhead algorithm that requires little bookkeeping on the part of the operating system. The idea is obvious from the name – the operating system keeps track of all the pages in memory in a queue, with the most recent arrival at the back, and the oldest arrival in front. When a page needs to be replaced, the page at the front of the queue (the oldest page) is selected. While FIFO is cheap and intuitive, it performs poorly in practical application. Thus, it is rarely used in its unmodified form. This algorithm experiences Bélády’s anomaly.

FIFO page replacement algorithm is used by the VAX/VMS operating system, with somemodifications. Partial second chance is provided by skipping a limited number of entries with valid translation table references, [6] and additionally, pages are displaced from process working set to a systemwide pool from which they can be recovered if not already re-used.

FIFO is a conservative algorithm, so it is k/(k - h + 1) competitive.

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Second Chance

A modified form of the FIFO page replacement algorithm, known as the Second-chance page replacement algorithm, fares relatively better than FIFO at little cost for the improvement. It works by looking at the front of the queue as FIFO does, but instead of immediately paging out that page, it checks to see if its referenced bit is set. If it is not set, the page is swapped out. Otherwise, the referenced bit is cleared, the page is inserted at the back of the queue (as if it were a new page) and this process is repeated. This can also be thought of as a circular queue. If all the pages have their referenced bit set, on the second encounter of the first page in the list, that page will be swapped out, as it now has its referenced bit cleared. If all the pages have their reference bit cleared, then second chance algorithm degenerates into pure FIFO.

As its name suggests, Second-chance gives every page a “second-chance” – an old page that has been referenced is probably in use, and should not be swapped out over a new page that has not been referenced.

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NRU

The not recently used (NRU) page replacement algorithm is an algorithm that favours keeping pages in memory that have been recently used. This algorithm works on the following principle: when a page is referenced, a referenced bit is set for that page, marking it as referenced. Similarly, when a page is modified (written to), a modified bit is set. The setting of the bits is usually done by the hardware, although it is possible to do so on the software level as well.

At a certain fixed time interval, a timer interrupt triggers and clears the referenced bit of all the pages, so only pages referenced within the current timer interval are marked with a referenced bit. When a page needs to be replaced, the operating system divides the pages into four classes:

3 referenced, modified 
2 referenced, not modified 
1 not referenced, modified 
0 not referenced, not modified

Although it does not seem possible for a page to be not referenced yet modified, this happens when a class 3 page has its referenced bit cleared by the timer interrupt. The NRU algorithm picks a random page from the lowest category for removal. So out of the above four pages, the NRU algorithm will replace the not referenced, not modified. Note that this algorithm implies that a modified but not referenced (within last timer interval) page is less important than a not modified page that is intensely referenced.

NRU is a marking algorithm, so it is k/(k - h + 1) competitve.

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Clock

Clock is a more efficient version of FIFO than Second-chance because pages don’t have to be constantly pushed to the back of the list, but it performs the same general function as Second-Chance. The clock algorithm keeps a circular list of pages in memory, with the “hand” (iterator) pointing to the last examined page frame in the list. When a page fault occurs and no empty frames exist, then the R (referenced) bit is inspected at the hand’s location. If R is 0, the new page is put in place of the page the “hand” points to, otherwise the R bit is cleared. Then, the clock hand is incremented and the process is repeated until a page is replaced.

CLOCK is a conservative algorithm, so it is k/(k - h + 1) competitive.

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LRU

The least recently used (LRU) page replacement algorithm, though similar in name to NRU, differs in the fact that LRU keeps track of page usage over a short period of time, while NRU just looks at the usage in the last clock interval. LRU works on the idea that pages that have been most heavily used in the past few instructions are most likely to be used heavily in the next few instructions too. While LRU can provide near-optimal performance in theory (almost as good as Adaptive Replacement Cache), it is rather expensive to implement in practice. There are a few implementation methods for this algorithm that try to reduce the cost yet keep as much of the performance as possible.

The most expensive method is the linked list method, which uses a linked list containing all the pages in memory. At the back of this list is the least recently used page, and at the front is the most recently used page. The cost of this implementation lies in the fact that items in the list will have to be moved about every memory reference, which is a very time-consuming process.

Another method that requires hardware support is as follows: suppose the hardware has a 64-bit counter that is incremented at every instruction. Whenever a page is accessed, it acquires the value equal to the counter at the time of page access. Whenever a page needs to be replaced, the operating system selects the page with the lowest counter and swaps it out. With present hardware, this is not feasible because the OS needs to examine the counter for every page in the cache memory.

Because of implementation costs, one may consider algorithms (like those that follow) that are similar to LRU, but which offer cheaper implementations.

One important advantage of the LRU algorithm is that it is amenable to full statistical analysis. It has been proven, for example, that LRU can never result in more than N-times more page faults than OPT algorithm, where N is proportional to the number of pages in the managed pool.

On the other hand, LRU’s weakness is that its performance tends to degenerate under many quite common reference patterns. For example, if there are N pages in the LRU pool, an application executing a loop over array of N + 1 pages will cause a page fault on each and every access. As loops over large arrays are common, much effort has been put into modifying LRU to work better in such situations. Many of the proposed LRU modifications try to detect looping reference patterns and to switch into suitable replacement algorithm, like Most Recently Used (MRU).