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Advantages of Virtual Memory

Virtual memory is a memory management technique that allows operating systems to extend the capacity of RAM by utilizing secondary storage, enabling the execution of more applications and larger programs. While it offers advantages like improved CPU utilization and the ability to share data, it can also lead to reduced system stability and slower application performance. The process involves the OS managing a virtual memory space on the hard drive to compensate for limited physical memory.

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18 views2 pages

Advantages of Virtual Memory

Virtual memory is a memory management technique that allows operating systems to extend the capacity of RAM by utilizing secondary storage, enabling the execution of more applications and larger programs. While it offers advantages like improved CPU utilization and the ability to share data, it can also lead to reduced system stability and slower application performance. The process involves the OS managing a virtual memory space on the hard drive to compensate for limited physical memory.

Uploaded by

Viveka College
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Advantages of Virtual Memory

Given below are the advantages of using Virtual Memory:

 Virtual Memory allows you to run more applications at a time.


 With the help of virtual memory, you can easily fit many large
programs into smaller programs.
 With the help of Virtual memory, a multiprogramming environment can
be easily implemented.
 As more processes should be maintained in the main memory which
leads to the effective utilization of the CPU.
 Common data can be shared easily between memory.
 With the help of virtual memory, speed is gained when only a
particular segment of the program is required for the execution of the
program.
 The process may execute even become larger than all of the physical
memory.

Disadvantages of Virtual Memory

Given below are the drawbacks of using Virtual Memory:

 Virtual memory reduces the stability of the system.


 The performance of Virtual memory is not as good as that of RAM.
 If a system is using virtual memory then applications may run slower.
 Virtual memory negatively affects the overall performance of a system.

How Virtual Memory Works?


It is used whenever some pages require to be loaded in the main
memory for the execution, and the memory is not available for those
many pages.

For example
Let’s assume that an OS requires 300 MB of memory to store all the running programs.
However, there’s currently only 50 MB of available physical memory stored on the RAM.

 The OS will then set up 250 MB of virtual memory and use a program called the
Virtual Memory Manager(VMM) to manage that 250 MB.
 So, in this case, the VMM will create a file on the hard disk that is 250 MB in size
to store extra memory that is required.
 The OS will now proceed to address memory as it considers 300 MB of real
memory stored in the RAM, even if only 50 MB space is available.
 It is the job of the VMM to manage 300 MB memory even if just 50 MB of real
memory space is

What is virtual memory?


Virtual memory is a memory management technique used by operating systems (OS). It allows a
computer to temporarily increase the capacity of its main memory — RAM — by using secondary
memory such as a hard drive or solid-state drive (SSD). Virtual memory utilizes hardware and software
to manage how information is stored and retrieved from the hard drive.
How does virtual memory work?
Whenever your computer stores something in RAM, that information is assigned a memory address — a
reference to where the information is stored on the RAM chip. When your computer starts running low
space on RAM, the OS will start transferring data from the RAM to your hard drive. The OS creates A
dedicated space on your hard drive for virtual memory.
Data stored on a hard drive is always assigned a physical address — a reference to where the
information is stored in the drive. The OS also maps physical addresses to virtual addresses as part of
the virtual memory process. Virtual addresses look like RAM addresses. That way, when a program is
running on your computer, it can seamlessly use RAM or virtual memory. When a program uses data
stored in virtual memory, the OS knows how to find the data using the physical address.

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