When is it best to use the second chance replacement algorithm?

Question

I'm going through 'Operating Concepts' by Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne (The Dinosaur Book) and it mentions the Second-Chance Algorithm (not enhanced) as an improvement on the FIFO replacement algorithm.

My question is, is there ever a case where this algorithm would perform better than, say, the Least Recently Used algorithm or even something like the Farthest-in-Future Algorithm? The book describes how the algorithm works but doesn't offer a lot of information on when it would be useful, other than just in improving 'FIFO'.

To add to this, is there ever a case where 'second chance' would out preform LRU? I'm assuming the answer is yes, as no algorithm is perfect for every situation.

Answer 1

Farthest-in-future is optimal, second chance can't be better. Second chance is a way to approximate LRU when the required hardware (access times, sort them) isn't available. Both try to approximate the optimal strategy, there certainly can be cases where one or the other is better.