PAGING TERMINOLOGY

Historically, paging sometimes also referred simply to memory allocation scheme using fixed-length pages as opposed to variable-length segments, and without implicit suggestion that virtual memory technique is employed at all or that those pages are transferred to disk. Such usage is rare today.

Some modern systems use the term swapping along with paging. Historically, swapping referred to moving from/to secondary storage a whole program at a time, in a scheme known as roll-in/roll-out. In the 1960s, after the concept of virtual memory was introduced—in two variants, either using segments or pages—the term swapping was applied to moving, respectively, either segments or pages, between disk and memory. Today with the virtual memory mostly based on pages, not segments, swapping became a fairly close synonym of paging, although with one difference.

 

In many popular systems, there is a concept known as page cache, of using the same single mechanism for both virtual memory and disk caching. A page may be then transferred to or from any ordinary disk file, not necessarily a dedicated space.

Fragmentation

 

In Windows's default configuration the pagefile is allowed to expand beyond its initial allocation when necessary. If this happens gradually, it can become heavily fragmented which can potentially cause performance problems. The common advice given to avoid this is to set a single "locked" pagefile size so that Windows will not expand it. However, the pagefile only expands when it has been filled, which, in its default configuration, is 150% the total amount of physical memory.Thus the total demand for pagefile-backed virtual memory must exceed 250% of the computer's physical memory before the pagefile will expand.

 

The fragmentation of the pagefile that occurs when it expands is temporary. As soon as the expanded regions are no longer in use (at the next reboot, if not sooner) the additional disk space allocations are freed and the pagefile is back to its original state.

 

Locking a page file's size can be problematic in the case that a Windows application requests more memory than the total size of physical memory and the pagefile. In this case, requests to allocate memory fail, which may cause applications and system processes to fail. Supporters of this view will note that the pagefile is rarely read or written in sequential order, so the performance advantage of having a completely sequential pagefile is minimal. However, it is generally agreed that a large pagefile will allow use of memory-heavy applications, and there is no penalty except that more disk space is used.

Defragmenting the page file is also occasionally recommended to improve performance when a Windows system is chronically using much more memory than its total physical memory. This view ignores the fact that, aside from the temporary results of expansion, the pagefile does not become fragmented over time. In general, performance concerns related to pagefile access are much more effectively dealt with by adding more physical memory.