The Topic Of Virtual Memory
Virtual memory is means that computing systems are able to operate, or
maybe more precisely, how they contribute to the function of a standard
computer's abilities. It can be more complex the deeper you get into
it, but if you can understand more of those complex languages that
create various aspects when working in alternate computational
environments with the ease of hot knife and butter cliches, then you
can better understand the ideas related to the concepts inherent with
virtual memory. Virtual memory, or virtual memory addressing, is a
memory management technique.
This system of memory management allows for multitasking
computer operating systems to which non-contiguous memory is presented
to a software or process as contiguous memory, typically used in paged
memory systems, and this contiguous memory is referred to as the
virtual address space. The term virtual memory is often confused with
memory swapping, often attributed to the Windows family of operating
systems referring to the enabling and disabling of memory swapping as a
sort of virtual memory, but Windows uses paged memory and virtual
memory addressing even if the so-called virtual memory is disabled.
When virtual memory is used in paged memory systems, it is
often combined with memory swapping, and is also known as anonymous
memory paging whereby memory pages stored in primary storage are
written to secondary storage. When this occurs, it is thus freeing
faster primary storage for other processes to use, and this is often
referred to as a swap file or swap partition. Virtual memory allows
software to run in a memory address space that's size and addressing
are not necessarily tied to the computer's physical memory, and to
properly implement virtual memory, the CPU must provide a way for the
operating system to map virtual memory to physical memory.
For it to detect when an address is required that does not currently relate to main memory so that the needed data can be swapped in, it would certainly be possible to provide virtual memory without the CPU's assistance, as it would essentially require emulating a CPU that would provide the needed features. This is what is meant when virtual memory is really being referred to, and unlike the misnomer created by Microsoft in regards to this type of memory, now you know a bit more about the fact of the matter.
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