Working sets today
Peter J. Denning · 2005
A program's working set is the collection of pages (or segments) recently referenced. This concept has led to efficient methods for measuring a program's intrinsic memory demand; it has assisted in understanding program behavior; and it has been used as the basis of optimal multiprogrammed memory management. This paper outlines the argument why it is unlikely that anyone will find a cheaper nonlookahead memory policy that delivers significantly better performance. This paper is based on a longer paper that presents the arguments in greater detail [DENN78d].