CS372H Spring 2010 Homework 12

This week's homework will review virtual memory, to reinforce the concepts from way back in the semester.

Problem 1

Consider the following piece of code which multiplies two matrices: 
int a[1024][1024], b[1024][1024], c[1024][1024];
multiply()
{
   unsigned i, j, k;
   for(i = 0; i < 1024; i++)
       for(j = 0; j < 1024; j++)
           for(k = 0; k < 1024; k++)
               c[i][j] += a[i,k] * b[k,j];
}
Assume that the binary for executing this function fits in one page, and the stack also fits in one page. Assume further that an integer requires 4 bytes for storage. Compute the number of TLB misses if the page size is 4096 and the TLB has 8 entries with a replacement policy consisting of LRU.

Problem 2

  1. A computer system has a page size of 1,024 bytes and maintains the page table for each process in main memory. The overhead required for doing a lookup in the page table is 500 ns. To reduce this overhead, the comnputer has a TLB that caches 32 virtual pages to physical frame mappings. A TLB lookup requires 100ns. What TLB hit-rate is required to ensure an average virtual address translation time of 200ns?

  2. Discuss the issues involved in picking a page size for a virtual memory system.
    1. Name one issue that argues for small page sizes? Name two that argue for large page sizes?
    2. How do the characteristics of disks influence the selection of a page size?

Problem 3

Consider a system with a virtual address size of 64MB (2^26), a physical memory of size 2GB (2^31), and a page size of 1K (2^10). Under the target workload, 32 processes (2^5) are running; half of the processes are smaller than 8K (2^13) and half use the full 64MB virtual address space. Each page has 4 control bits.
  1. What is the size of a single top-level page table entry (and why)?
  2. What is the size of a single bottom-level page table entry (and why)?
  3. If you had to choose between two arrangements of page table: 2-level and 3-level, which would you choose and why? Compute the expected space overhead for each variation: State the space overhead for each small process and each large process. Then compute the total space overhead for the entire system.