Report Number: CS-TR-81-849
Institution: Stanford University, Department of Computer Science
Title: Experiments on the Knee Criterion in a multiprogrammed computer system
Author: Nishigaki, Tohru
Date: March 1981
Abstract: Although the effectiveness of the Knee Criterion as a virtual memory management strategy is widely accepted, it has been impossible to take advantage of it in a practical system, because little information is available about the program behavior of executing jobs. A new memory management technique to achieve the Knee Criterion in a multiprogrammed virtual memory system is developed. The technique, termed the Optimum Working-set Estimator (OWE), abstracts the programs' behavior from their past histories by exponential smoothing, and modifies their working set window sizes in order to attain the Knee Criterion. The OWE method was implemented and investigated. Measurements demonstrate its ability to control a variety of jobs. Furthermore, the results also reveal that the throughput improvement is possible in a space-squeezing environment. This technique is expected to increase the efficiency of multiprogrammed virtual memory systems.
http://i.stanford.edu/pub/cstr/reports/cs/tr/81/849/CS-TR-81-849.pdf