Explain the concept of memory fragmentation.

Memory fragmentation refers to the phenomenon where free memory becomes divided into small, non-contiguous blocks over time, making it difficult to allocate larger contiguous blocks of memory to processes. There are two types of memory fragmentation: external fragmentation and internal fragmentation.

External fragmentation occurs when free memory is scattered throughout the system, resulting in small pockets of unused memory that are too small to be allocated to a process. This can happen when processes are loaded and unloaded from memory, leaving behind small gaps that cannot be utilized efficiently.

Internal fragmentation, on the other hand, occurs when allocated memory blocks are larger than what is actually required by a process. This leads to wasted memory within each allocated block, as the excess space cannot be used by other processes.

Both types of fragmentation can lead to inefficient memory utilization and can impact system performance. Memory management techniques such as compaction, paging, and segmentation are used to mitigate the effects of fragmentation and optimize memory allocation.