Modern operating systems
The design, implementation, and evaluation of a working set dispatcher
Communications of the ACM
The working set model for program behavior
Communications of the ACM
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From their beginnings in the 1940s, electronic computers had two-level storage systems. In the 1950s, main memory was magnetic core RAM (today it is semiconductor RAM) and the secondary memory was magnetic drums (today it is disks). The processor (CPU) could address only the main memory. A major part of a programmer's job was to devise a good way to divide a program into blocks and to schedule their moves between the levels. The blocks were called segments or pages and the movement operations overlays or swaps. The contents of main memory were called the "set of working information," or working set for short.