Patent ID: 6983467

Claim:
In a multitasking operating system that uses virtual memory to share physical memory among concurrently executing application programs, a method for controlling allocation of physical memory comprising: in response to a call from an application program, other than an operating system, to group said application specified code or data in a group, creating a structure to group the code or data specified by the application; monitoring for a not-present interrupt generated by a virtual memory system used by said multitasking operating system in response to a said application request to access any part of the code or the data in the group; and when the not-present interrupt occurs for a unit of memory in the group, loading all of the code or the data in the group that is not already in the physical memory into the physical memory from secondary storage at one time, using a single series of loading operations without further not-present interrupts being generated by the virtual memory system for another unit of memory in the group, the loading including the unit of memory for which the not-present interrupt has occurred and all other units of memory used to store the code or the data in the group.