Interactive Memory Management System (IMMS)

Small C++ console simulator that visualizes paging and heap allocation strategies. It lets you allocate/deallocate memory blocks with first/best/worst fit, map process pages to frames, enqueue requests, and view fragmentation plus basic utilization stats in real time.

Build

• Requires a C++17 compiler (uses unistd.h for delays).
• From the repo root: g++ -std=c++17 main.cpp -o imms

Run

• Execute ./imms (or imms.exe on Windows; remove unistd.h/usleep and swap for Sleep if needed).
• The program redraws the dashboard each tick; ANSI colors are used for clarity.

What You See

• Physical Memory Bar: 20 frames (size 5 each) showing which PID owns a frame.
• Page Table: Fixed table for Process 1 (6 entries) mapping pages to frames.
• Stats Panel: Used/free frames, page count, and a simple heatmap of utilization.
• Request Queue: Pending allocation/deallocation requests with FIFO processing.
• Fragmentation Analysis: Total free, block counts, largest block, and ratio.

Menu Actions

• 1 Immediate allocate: choose size and strategy (1=First, 2=Best, 3=Worst).
• 2 Immediate deallocate by PID.
• 3 Allocate N pages for Process 1 (one frame per page).
• 4 Fragmentation analysis.
• 5 Enqueue allocation request.
• 6 Enqueue deallocation request.
• 7 Process next queued request.
• 8 Run all queued requests automatically (with short delays for visuals).
• q Quit.

Implementation Notes

• Memory is a linked list of memory_block nodes; splits/merges occur on alloc/free.
• Heaps are rebuilt on each request to pick best/worst free blocks quickly.
• Frames are derived from start offsets divided by FRAME_SIZE; constants live at the top of main.cpp for quick tuning.

Test Cases

Test Case	Expected Outcome
Allocate 10 units using First Fit	first adequate block is selected
Allocate using Best Fit on multiple free holes	smallest adequate block is selected
Allocate pages for process1	Frame allocation and page table update
Request size larger than any free block	display no suitable block
Page Table Overflow	display page table full
Deallocate invalid/terminated process	display invalid PID
Difference in Best/Worst fit in highly fragmented memory	Best Fit should trigger less of page faults