Inside Microsoft Windows 2000, Third Edition (Microsoft Programming Series)

In this chapter, we've examined how the Windows 2000 memory manager implements virtual memory management. As with most 32-bit operating systems, each process is given access to a private 32-bit address space, protecting one process's memory from another's but allowing processes to share memory efficiently and securely. Advanced capabilities, such as the inclusion of mapped files and the ability to sparsely allocate memory, are also available. The Win32 environment subsystem makes most of the memory manager's capabilities available to applications through the Win32 API.

The memory manager's implementation relies on lazy-evaluation techniques whenever possible to avoid performing time-consuming and unnecessary operations unless they are required. It is also self-tuning, adapting to both large multiprocessor servers as well as uniprocessor desktop workstations.

One aspect of the memory manager that we didn't describe in this chapter is its tight integration with the cache manager, which we'll cover in Chapter 11. But before we get to that, let's take a closer look at the Windows 2000 security mechanisms.