< architecture > The set of all pages (in a paging virtual memory system) used by a process during some time interval.
As a result of locality of reference , the working set frequently consists of a relatively small fraction of a process's total virtual memory pages. While a process's entire working set is in physical memory the process will run without page faults . If the working set is too large for available physical memory, the process causes frequent page faults .
In a multitasking environment, information about which pages are in each process's working set allows the memory management system to improve CPU efficiency by prepaging (also called the working set model ).
["Modern Operating Systems", Andrew S. Tanenbaum, pub. Prentice Hall, Inc. 1992].
(1997-04-09)