What is Next Fit?

What is Next Fit?

The next fit is a modified version of ‘first fit’. It begins as the first fit to find a free partition but when called next time it starts searching from where it left off, not from the beginning. This policy makes use of a roving pointer. The pointer moves along the memory chain to search for the next fit. This helps in, to avoid the usage of memory always from the head (beginning) of the free blockchain....

What is its advantage over first fit?

First fit is a straight and fast algorithm, but tends to cut a large portion of free parts into small pieces due to which, processes that need a large portion of memory block would not get anything even if the sum of all small pieces is greater than it required which is so-called external fragmentation problem. Another problem of the first fit is that it tends to allocate memory parts at the beginning of the memory, which may lead to more internal fragments at the beginning. Next fit tries to address this problem by starting the search for the free portion of parts not from the start of the memory, but from where it ends last time. Next fit is a very fast searching algorithm and is also comparatively faster than First Fit and Best Fit Memory Management Algorithms....