Dynamic swappiness in memory swapping

• Main Authors: De Leon, John Robert T., Gilos, Jules Ian R.
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Animo Repository 2014
• Subjects: Memory management (Computer science); Computer storage devices; Information storage and retrieval systems; Computer Engineering
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etd_bachelors/5562
• Institution: De La Salle University

In Android Operating System 2.3 and higher versions, the default Android Memory Management system kills applications when the free memory of the device running the Android operating system reaches a critical level. The system will select an application to be killed to free up memory based on its hierarchy of priority. However killing the application marked as low priority in Android does not mean it holds importance for the user but only holds importance to the system. This illustrates a problem encountered by common android users where important applications are closed down by the memory management system. More experienced/power users of android operating systems work around this issue by enabling Memory Swapping which is a method in which computer uses to extend the internal memory by creating a virtual memory that will be an addition storage for the internal memory. This method will suppress the behavior of the default memory management of the device to kill applications but enabling this system comes with a tradeoff. The tradeoff of suppressing killing of applications by enabling Memory Swapping creates an increased resource usage of the external storage. This helps to avoid losing data but is inefficient due to an increased usage of the external storage causing will be performance issues due to longer access time created by reading and writing to the external memory random applications that may be important to the user.;"In this study, we created a technique that takes applications into account in terms of its importance to the user by means of time usage and number of applications that is running. These terms are affecting the metric of the Memory Swapping which in turn changes how often the Memory Swapping occurs in the system. The technique is done dynamically therefore behavior of the Memory Swapping changes over time thus having it named "Dynamic Swap." The results of this technique showed that the Read and Write cycle is lower in comparison with the Static implementation of Memory Swapping.