程序在内存中运行的奥秘 Anatomy of a Program in Memory-in English.docxVIP

 HYPERLINK /gustavo/blog/post/anatomy-of-a-program-in-memory Anatomy of a Program in Memory Memory management is the heart of operating systems; it is crucial for both programming and system administration. In the next few posts I’ll cover memory with an eye towards practical aspects, but without shying away from internals. While the concepts are generic, examples are mostly from Linux and Windows on 32-bit x86. This first post describes how programs are laid out in memory. Each process in a multi-tasking OS runs in its own memory sandbox. This sandbox is the?virtual address space, which in 32-bit mode is?always a 4GB block of memory addresses. These virtual addresses are mapped to physical memory by?page tables, which are maintained by the operating system kernel and consulted by the processor. Each process has its own set of page tables, but there is a catch. Once virtual addresses are enabled, they apply to?all software?running in the machine,?including the kernel itself. Thus a portion of the virtual address space must be reserved to the kernel: This does?not?mean the kernel uses that much physical memory, only that it has that portion of address space available to map whatever physical memory it wishes. Kernel space is flagged in the page tables as exclusive to? HYPERLINK /gustavo/blog/post/cpu-rings-privilege-and-protection privileged code?(ring 2 or lower), hence a page fault is triggered if user-mode programs try to touch it. In Linux, kernel space is constantly present and maps the same physical memory in all processes. Kernel code and data are always addressable, ready to handle interrupts or system calls at any time. By contrast, the mapping for the user-mode portion of the address space changes whenever a process switch happens: Blue regions represent virtual addresses that are mapped to physical memory, whereas white regions are unmapped. In the example above, Firefox has used far more of its virtual address space due to its legendary memory hung