An Interactive Software Engineering Tool for Memory Management and User Program Evaluation,

As the use of virtual memory becomes more and more accepted, the problem of effective storage management becomes more and more important. To date most efforts to optimize the use of memory have been directed at devising memory management strategies at the operating system level that minimize the number of page faults. Little effort has been made to provide the programmer with suitable tools for making his programs more local. To fill this need the Brown University Display for Working Set References was developed, enabling the programmer to directly monitor the page referencing behavior of his modules. This interactive graphics measurement system uses a satellite processor to display user program memory references and working set parameters. The system and several parameters used to evaluate program memory utilization are discussed. Practical programming guidelines and packaging techniques to improve memory usage in a virtual memory environment are presented. Author