What is the difference between internal and external fragmentation?

What is the difference between internal and external fragmentation?

Internal fragmentation occurs when memory blocks are allocated but not fully used, while external fragmentation happens when free memory is split into small, non-contiguous blocks.

Can you give an example of internal fragmentation?

Sure! If a program requests 100 bytes of memory but the system allocates a 128-byte block, the remaining 28 bytes are wasted, causing internal fragmentation.

And what about external fragmentation?

External fragmentation occurs when there is enough total free memory to satisfy a request, but it's not contiguous. For example, if you have free blocks of 20, 30, and 50 bytes, you can't allocate 60 bytes.

How can we reduce fragmentation in memory management?

Fragmentation can be reduced through techniques like compaction, paging, and segmentation, which help manage memory allocation more efficiently.