Operating Systems, unit: Memory Management. Core concepts, terminology, and worked-example cues a college student meets for this unit, building on prior units without repeating them. Front: a term, concept, or short problem cue. Back: the definition, explanation, or answer.
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- What is memory management?
- The OS function responsible for allocating and tracking a computer's main memory (RAM)
- What is a logical (virtual) address?
- An address generated by the CPU during program execution, translated before accessing physical memory
- What is a physical address?
- The actual address in the computer's physical RAM hardware
- What is address binding?
- The process of mapping logical addresses to physical memory addresses
- What is contiguous memory allocation?
- Assigning each process a single contiguous block of memory
- What is fixed (static) partitioning?
- Dividing memory into fixed-size partitions, each holding one process
- What is dynamic partitioning?
- Allocating memory partitions of varying sizes as needed by each process
- What is external fragmentation?
- Wasted memory in small, scattered free blocks too small to be useful individually
- What is internal fragmentation?
- Wasted memory within an allocated block that is larger than what the process actually needs
- What is paging?
- A memory management scheme that divides memory into fixed-size blocks called pages and frames
- What is a page, in paging?
- A fixed-size block of a process's logical memory
- What is a frame, in paging?
- A fixed-size block of physical memory that holds a page
- What is a page table?
- A data structure mapping a process's pages to physical memory frames
- What is segmentation?
- A memory management scheme that divides a program into variable-size logical segments, like code and data
- What is the main advantage of paging over contiguous allocation?
- It eliminates external fragmentation by allowing non-contiguous physical memory allocation
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