Question

Consider a fixed partitioning scheme with equal-size partitions of 512 bytes and a total main memory size of 8 MB. A process table is maintained that includes a pointer to a partition for each resident process. How many bits are required for the pointer?

Answer 1

In a fixed partitioning scheme with equal-size partitions of 512 bytes and a total main memory of 8 MB, 14 bits are required for the pointer in the process table.

Step-by-step explanation:

In the given fixed partitioning scheme, each partition is 512 bytes in size and there is a total main memory size of 8 MB. The process table maintains a pointer to a partition for each resident process. To determine how many bits are required for the pointer, we need to calculate the number of partitions that can fit in the main memory and convert it to bits.

Given that there are 8 MB of main memory and each partition is 512 bytes in size, we can calculate the number of partitions as:

1. Convert the main memory size to bytes: 8 MB * 1024 * 1024 bytes/MB = 8,388,608 bytes
2. Divide the main memory size by the partition size: 8,388,608 bytes / 512 bytes/partition = 16,384 partitions

Since there are 16,384 partitions, we need log2(16,384) bits to represent the pointer. Hence, 14 bits are required for the pointer.