Learn about the concepts of External and Internal Fragmentation in memory management.
Explanation: After multiple allocations and deallocations in memory, small empty spaces (holes) become scattered throughout. Even if the total free memory is large, these small scattered spaces make it difficult to fit large processes because they aren't contiguous.
Example: Imagine your drawers have small empty spaces, but none of them are big enough to store a large item. If you need space for something big, these scattered empty spaces won't help because they aren't all together.
Solution: The solution to this problem is compaction, which gathers all the small free spaces together to create one large block of free memory. This allows larger processes to fit easily.
Explanation: Internal fragmentation occurs when a process or data is allocated more space than it actually needs, leaving some unused space within the allocated area. This extra space can't be used for anything else, but it's still considered allocated.
Example: Imagine you need a 1-liter bottle for water, but you use a 2-liter bottle instead. The remaining 1 liter of space in the bottle is wasted—it's there, but you aren't using it, even though the bottle is still occupied.
Cause: Internal fragmentation often happens when memory is allocated in fixed-size blocks, such as 1 KB blocks. If a process needs 600 bytes, allocating a full 1 KB block leaves 400 bytes unused.
External Fragmentation: Small, scattered empty spaces make it hard to fit large processes.
Internal Fragmentation: Some portion of allocated space remains unused because the allocation was larger than needed.