Q 4.1 - Paging and Segmentation

One motivation for page-based memory management is the concern about memory fragmentation.  What is the “fragmentation” problem and why does it occur?

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This is an instance of the classical dynamic storage allocation problem.  With variable-sized jobs arriving/departing at arbitrary times, one can end up in a state with just part of the available memory in use,but the unused parts are scattered all over the place in small pieces, many of which are too small to be useful.  this leads to wastage.  Fragmentation therefore occurs when spaces are not utilized in the memory simply because they are part of addresses that fail to utilize them.  With such a situation, the memory space is wasted to the detriment of other running processes.