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Virtual Memory

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What is virtual memory?

If your computer lacks the random access memory (RAM) needed to run a program or operation, Windows uses virtual memory to compensate. Virtual memory combines your computers RAM with temporary space on your hard disk. When RAM runs low, virtual memory moves data from RAM to a space called a paging file. Moving data to and from the paging file frees up RAM to complete its work. The more RAM your computer has, the faster your programs will generally run. If a lack of RAM is slowing your computer, you might be tempted to increase virtual memory to compensate. However, your computer can read data from RAM much more quickly than from a hard disk, so adding RAM is a better solution
Virtual memory is an operating system feature that was originally used to provide large usable address spaces for every process on machines that had very little physical memory. It is used by an operating system to fool1 a running process into believing that it can allocate a vast amount of memory for its own purposes, although whether it is allowed to or not depends on the operating system and the permissions of the individual user.

To facilitate copying virtual memory into real memory, the operating system divides virtual memory into pages, each of which contains a fixed number of addresses. Each page is stored on a disk until it is needed. When the page is needed, the operating system copies it from disk to main memory, translating the virtual addresses into real addresses. Virtual-real operation

In OS/VS1 and similar OSes, some parts of systems memory are managed in virtual-real mode, where every virtual address corresponds to a real address, specifically interrupt mechanisms, paging supervisor and tables in older systems, and application programs using non-standard I/O management. For example, IBM's z/OS has 3 modes (virtual-virtual, virtual-real and virtualfixed)
Memory Read operation Memory Read operation is carried out by first selecting the memory chip by activating the Memory Select signal. The Read signal is asserted to configure the memory circuitry for reading data from the memory. An address (100) is applied on the Address Lines. The internal address decoder of the memory decodes the address and selects one unique row from which data is read. Memory Write operation Memory Write operation is carried out by first selecting the memory chip by activating the Memory Select signal. The Write signal is asserted to configure the memory circuitry for writing data to the memory. An address (011) is placed on the Address Lines by the

microprocessor. The internal address decoder of the memory decodes the address and selects one unique row select line which selects the row location 3. The data (10110010) to be written to the selected memory location is placed on the external data bus by the microprocessor which is stored in the selected location.

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