Abstract:

One of the key research areas in operating systems is memory allocation and process management by the operating system. Memory allocation is the process of allocating blocks of memory to different executing processes in order to improve overall system performance. This paper analyses the efficiency of memory allocation algorithms (first fit, best fit and worst fit) in the multiple partition and contiguous memory allocation scheme. A Mathematical model was used on process sizes in terms of percentage internal fragmentation (IF%), percentage external fragmentation (EF%), and percentage total utilization (TU%), this was done to compare the performance of the memory allocation algorithm. Results from the analysis show that the best fit made more efficient use of the available memory space than that of first-fit and worst fit.