Question

Difference between contiguous and noncontiguous memory allocation

Answer 1

When we talk about memory we talk about a large array of bytes.

Memory can be divided into two. These are:
Contiguous memory allocation
Noncontiguous memory allocation.

The main difference between these two is :

The contiguous memory allocation assigns the consecutive blocks of memory to a process requesting for memory whereas the Noncontiguous memory allocation assigns the separate memory blocks at the different location in memory space in a No consecutive manner to a process requesting for memory.

Answer 2

Contiguous memory allocation

1. Allocates consecutive blocks of memory to a process.

2. It does not have the overhead of address translation while execution of a process.

3. In contiguous memory allocation a process executes faster.

4. The memory space is divided into fixed-sized partition and each partition is allocated to a single process only.

5. A table is maintained by the operating system that maintains the list of available and occupied partition in the memory space.

Noncontiguous memory allocation

1. Allocates separate blocks of memory to a process.

2. It has overhead of address translation while execution of a process.

3. In noncontiguous memory allocation a process executes slowly.

4. The process is divided into several blocks and placed in different parts of the memory according to the availability of memory space.

5. A table is maintained for each process which carries the base addresses of each block that has been acquired by a process in memory.