<
architecture> The
set of all pages (in a
paging {virtual
memory} system) used by a
process during some time interval.
As a result of
locality of reference, the
working set
frequently consists of a relatively small fraction of a
process's total virtual memory pages. While a process's
entire
working set is in
physical memory the process will
run without
page faults. If the
working set is too large
for available physical memory, the process causes frequent
page faults.
In a
multitasking environment, information about which pages
are in each process's
working set allows the memory management
system to improve
CPU efficiency by
prepaging (also called
the
working set model).
[
"Modern Operating Systems", Andrew S. Tanenbaum, pub.
Prentice Hall, Inc. 1992].
(1997-04-09)