Some Results on the Working Set Anomalies in Numerical Programs

This paper shows that the working set parameter-real memory and real memory-fault rate anomalies mentioned by Franklin, Graham, and Gupta in [13] do occur in traces generated by real programs. The results of the detailed investigation of this anomalous behavior in four Fortran programs are presented. In some cases a drop of a factor of two in the average real-time memory allotment is observed when the window size is increased. In some instances a bigger real-time memory allotment means an order of magnitude increase in page faults.