15-410 Project 4 Paging

If you choose to do paging, here is what we are looking for.

• The main goal of course is that it should be possible to support more processes than fit into physical memory at the same time.

• Your kernel must never overwrite sector zero of the disk, but the remainder is yours to do with what you will.

• You will need some data structure to manage allocation of space on your paging disk.

• You will need a page-replacement algorithm. We would like to see something better than "random", but here you should use your judgement given the amount of time you have. Remember that the x86 hardware provides you with a dirty bit, a reference bit, and some bits you may use for your own purposes. Furthermore, if a page is not marked as present, the hardware will not use the frame-number bits.

• We don't recommend paging out kernel data structures. It can be done, but maybe not in the time you have available.

Have Fun!

Make sure to have some fun with this project. You've earned it, right?

[Last modified Saturday January 10, 2004]