cst 334: week 4

This week in CST 334, I learned about key concepts in memory management, focusing on paging and virtual memory. I started with paging, which breaks memory into small, fixed-size blocks called pages. This makes it easier for the operating system or OS to manage memory efficiently, as it doesn’t have to allocate large chunks of space all at once. I also learned about Translation Lookaside Buffers aka TLBs, which speed up the process of converting virtual memory addresses into physical addresses by storing recently used translations. This reduces the time it takes to access memory.

Next, I learned more about advanced page tables, which can help organize and track memory in a more complex way, especially when dealing with a large number of processes. This structure allows the OS to efficiently handle a variety of memory needs. I also studied swapping, where the OS moves data between RAM and disk to free up memory for active processes. This is particularly helpful when the system has limited memory and needs to ensure that running programs have the resources they need. Finally, I learned about swapping policies, which help the OS decide when and which processes to swap in and out of memory. These policies are critical for maintaining system performance and ensuring that memory is used efficiently. Overall, this week gave me a solid understanding of how paging, TLBs, and swapping work together to manage memory effectively in an operating system, making sure that multiple programs can run smoothly without issues.