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Virtual Memory

We say that we "load" pages into physical memory

But where are they loaded from?

  • code is loaded from the executable file stored on disk
  • global data is also initially loaded from here
  • dynamic (heap, stack) data is created in memory

Consider a process whose address space exceeds physical memory

The pages of dynamic data not currently in use

  • may need to be removed temporarily from memory  (see later)
  • thus would also be saved on disk and restored from disk