Q6Computer Architecture
Question
Q.6. What is Virtual Memory?
Answer
Virtual memory is a memory management technique that gives programs the illusion of a large, contiguous address space by using disk storage to extend physical RAM, with the OS/MMU mapping virtual addresses to physical ones.
Virtual memory is a technique that allows execution of programs whose address space exceeds the size of available physical main memory, by using secondary storage (disk) as an extension of RAM. The operating system, with hardware support from the Memory Management Unit (MMU), divides programs into fixed-size pages (or variable-size segments) and keeps only the currently needed portions in physical memory, transparently swapping pages in and out via page tables that map virtual addresses to physical addresses, giving each process the illusion of a large, private, contiguous address space.