Determining optimal Page Size for Multiprogramming operating System

Abstract

Determining optimal page size is one of the challenging tasks for designer of the operating systems. If page size is large, it creates larger fragmentation. On the other hand, if it is small, page table requires a huge memory space. The page size also affects the miss ratio. Present study analyzes these issues. For analysis purpose, a Multiprogramming operating system (MOS) is undertaken. Parameters are selected which affect the page size, and by varying them, performance analysis on MOS is experimentally conducted. The result achieved from the experiment is that memory fragmentation increases and storage requirement for the page table decreases in proportion to the page size. But the page fault does not decrease in proportion to page size. After the experiment, the optimal page size for the MOS system is found to be 40 bytes. This thesis tries to further study the existing theory on page size.