1.2.1 Operating Systems - Memory Management

Question 1

What does memory management allow for?

Answer 1

Memory management allows programs to be stored in memory safely and efficiently.

Question 2

What could one program do to another without memory management?

Answer 2

Without memory management, one program could change the data of another. With memory management each different program will be using its own data.

Question 3

What is segmentation?

Answer 3

Segmentation is the splitting up of a program into blocks containing modules or routines.

Question 4

What is pagination (paging)?

Answer 4

Pagination (paging) is the splitting up of programs into blocks of the same physical memory size. Each physical unit is a page.

Question 5

How are pages kept track of?

Answer 5

The operating system uses a page table to keep track of where pages are stored, meaning they don’t have to be stored contiguously (next to each other).

Question 6

What do most modern operating systems use in memory management, pagination (paging) or segmentation?

Answer 6

Most modern operating systems use a combination of paging and segmentation in their memory management.

Question 7

Why is paging and segmentation used?

Answer 7

Paging and segmentation is used to maintain efficiency - when a new program needs to be loaded into memory, it is inefficient to ‘shuffle’ an entire program along to give room for this new process. Instead the operating systems splits processes via paging or segmentation.