Managing physical memory in a virtual memory computer

Abstract

A method for use in a computer. A user of the computer stores a table of selections in a permanent memory structure of the computer, each selection indicating a memory object and one of at least two memory management policies for the memory object. The selections may select from one or more choices: e.g., whether pages of the memory object are to be reserved, or faulted on demand; whether pages of the memory object are to be locked into physical memory of the computer, or to be demand paged from a fluid page pool; whether pages allocated for the memory object are to be zeroed; whether the memory object is to be mapped using shared page tables; or specifying whether memory for the memory object is to be allocated contiguous physical pages of memory. A symbolic name is assigned to each of the memory objects. A non-privileged process issues a request designating one of the memory objects by symbolic name, and allocating memory from a reserved pool of memory for use in the object. The physical pages of the memory objects are managed, each according to the corresponding stored selection.