What is Virtual Memory.

By Author Richard Akin

Virtual memory means that computing systems are able to operate in other words 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 clichés, 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.