working set

[′wərk·iŋ ′set]

(computer science)

The smallest collection of instruction and data words of a given computer program which should be loaded into the main storage of a computer system so that efficient processing is possible.

working set

(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].

This article is provided by FOLDOC - Free Online Dictionary of Computing (foldoc.org)

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