Description: External fragmentation is a condition that occurs in memory management in computing systems, where free memory is divided into small non-contiguous blocks. This happens when memory blocks of different sizes are allocated and freed, resulting in empty spaces that are not large enough to satisfy new memory requests. Although there is enough total memory available, external fragmentation can prevent efficient use, as processes requiring contiguous memory blocks cannot be accommodated. This situation is particularly problematic in systems that require large memory blocks to run applications or processes. External fragmentation differs from internal fragmentation, where the space allocated to a process is larger than what it actually needs, leaving wasted space within a contiguous block. Managing external fragmentation is a significant challenge for system designers, as it affects performance and memory usage efficiency. To mitigate this problem, various techniques have been developed, such as memory compaction, which attempts to reorganize memory blocks to create larger contiguous spaces, although this can be costly in terms of processing time.
