Exploiting the least recently used page replacement algorithm

Abstract

AbstractMany implementations of paged virtual memory systems employ demand fetching with least recently used (LRU) replacement. The stack characteristic of LRU replacement implies that a reference string which repeatedly accesses a number of pages in sequence will cause a page fault for each successive page referenced when the number of pages is greater than the number of page frames allocated to the program's LRU stack. In certain circumstances when the individual operations being performed on the referenced string are independent, or more precisely are commutative, the order of alternate page reference sequences can be reversed. This paper considers sequences which cannot be reversed and shows how placement of information on pages can achieve a similar effect if at least half the pages can be held in the LRU stack.