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I am currently trying to build a simple computer in Minecraft (8-bit data, 6-bit addresses, no paging or segmentation), with redstone, where I can make run simple programs written similarly to code in the Little Man Computer. However, I have come across the problem that I have no idea which addresses in RAM are free to use.

I have seen Linux, for example, has an array that describes each address (that I am guessing includes if it is free or not). In my case, however, it seems impractical to create a massive block of memory dedicated to this, that will be a very similar size to even the RAM itself, due to having the same length for addresses.

Am I thinking about this the wrong way? Is there a more efficient method than creating a large block of storage? Is there a way to decrease the size of the storage?

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The memory allocator is typically responsible for keeping track of which areas in memory are free. For instance, the memory allocator might keep a list of which regions of memory are free and available for allocation. This is called, appropriately, the "free list". See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_list and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_management.

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  • $\begingroup$ Thanks!!! this helped a lot. $\endgroup$
    – hello there
    Nov 21 at 17:50

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