English

FIFO anomaly is unbounded

Operating Systems 2010-03-13 v2

Abstract

Virtual memory of computers is usually implemented by demand paging. For some page replacement algorithms the number of page faults may increase as the number of page frames increases. Belady, Nelson and Shedler constructed reference strings for which page replacement algorithm FIFO produces near twice more page faults in a larger memory than in a smaller one. They formulated the conjecture that 2 is a general bound. We prove that this ratio can be arbitrarily large.

Cite

@article{arxiv.1003.1336,
  title  = {FIFO anomaly is unbounded},
  author = {Peter Fornai and Antal Ivanyi},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1003.1336},
  year   = {2010}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-21T14:54:26.251Z