Reply To: fork()

The local space of a forked child is topologically similar to the local space of the parent, just at different addresses. The fork() function must allocate the new child local space such that none of that topology collides with existing global allocation, including those arising from the global equivalent of local allocations. It is not necessary that the new child have a topology-sized space all to itself, but its local must fit in the unallocated holes in global space.