Internal fragmentation

Internal fragmentation

Internal fragmentation occurs when allocated memory blocks are larger than the data they store, leaving unused space inside the allocated block. This happens because memory is allocated in fixed-size units (e.g., pages in paging system or predefined allocation sizes in heap memory). The unused portion inside an allocated block is wasted, leading to inefficiency. For example a process is allocated a 4 KB memory page but only uses 3 KB, wasting 1 KB inside the page.