Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!rutgers!umnd-cs!umn-cs!umdcs
From: umdcs@umn-cs.UUCP (Jeff Wabik)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Memory Fragmentation Question
Message-ID: <2074@umn-cs.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 23-Aug-87 22:07:09 EDT
Article-I.D.: umn-cs.2074
Posted: Sun Aug 23 22:07:09 1987
Date-Received: Mon, 24-Aug-87 04:08:48 EDT
References: <556489503.138.te07.linesville.ibm032@andrew.cmu.edu> <7154@g.ms.uky.edu>
Organization: University of Minnesota, Minneapolis
Lines: 31
Summary: Wha?

In article <7154@g.ms.uky.edu>, sean@ms.uky.edu (Sean Casey) writes:
> In article <556489503.138.te07.linesville.ibm032@andrew.cmu.edu> te07#@ANDREW.CMU.EDU (Tom Epperly) writes:
> >Am I correct in thinking that the Amiga's memory management causes
> >memory to be gradually fragmented into a bunch of little chunks?  If
> >this is so, has anyone written a program to coalesce these small chunks
> >into bigger chunks?
  
> Would that be necessary?  Disk accesses take longer when a disk is
> fragmented, but memory accesses wouldn't.  I really can't think of
> any reason why one would need to do this.

You can't?  How about the ability to allocate a hunk of consecutive memory
large enough to run another task?  Having 100k of free memory doesn't mean
that you can run a 100k task, since there might be 51 other tasks running,
each with 2K of "free" between them in physical memory.  The Amiga, 
unfortunately(?) is not a virtual machine.

Wasn't this something we learned in "Computer Science 1001"?

As long as we're giving wish lists -- does there exist an equivalent to 
UNIX's "kill" for the Amiga?  A light skimming of the RKM's doesn't yeild
an easy solution to this problem aching to be answered.

	-Jeff

><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
In no way officially representing myself.

"Live Long and Program."  
	-Spock, Star Trek IX, "The search for an efficient algorithm"
><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>