2007-03-19 02:52:13 · 6 answers · asked by Dennis R 1 in Computers & Internet ➔ Hardware ➔ Desktops
As you know your computer has a finite amount of RAM (usually 512 MB or 1 GB) which is used by the programs you execute. Now, what happens if you try and execute a program that needs say 2 GB of memory (like a large and complex game)?
In the above situation, the OS grabs a piece of space on the Hard Disk and starts treating it like a RAM extension space, thus it acts like memory itself - hence the term Virtual Memory is used.
Obviously, the time needed to access something on such memory (since it is actually on the disk) is in the order of microseconds while a similar access on physical RAM is in the order of nanoseconds (i.e. 1000 times faster).
All modern OS's offer Virtual Memory support out of the box and use it when needed automatically. In normal operation, you never have to worry about Virtual Memory issues. You will need to worry about it only when you run a program that is a memory-hogger or a rogue program (such as a C program that starts to do malloc() calls in an infinite loop).
2007-03-19 03:01:52 · answer #1 · answered by Zapata 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Virtual Memory is a chunk of Hard Drive space that whose contents is known by a program. The chunk is used to store code that has run or may run in the near future but is not so important that it we stored in RAM. When a program needs new code the computer knows to check the virtual memory first which is smaller and more easily searched. Only after it has searched that area will it go into the rest of the hard drive.
2007-03-19 09:59:02 · answer #2 · answered by a_talis_man 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋
It is harddrive space that windows uses to emulate RAM. That is why adding RAM helps performance in Windows. It uses the virtual memory less and RAM more. Whenever Windows runs out of RAM it will start doing a lot of hard disk reads and writes.
2007-03-19 09:57:03 · answer #3 · answered by hmhhhdirtbag 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋
virtual memory is nothing but space on hard disk used to store files to be used by the RAM memory.
2007-03-19 09:55:47 · answer #4 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
Memory that uses Free Hard Drive Space on C
The System will define an area on your Hard drivew that you nominate, and use that as a write-back file, sort of like a Cache
2007-03-19 09:55:33 · answer #5 · answered by Mictlan_KISS 6 · 1⤊ 0⤋
so simple
vir tual mem ory
2007-03-19 09:59:36 · answer #6 · answered by Rishabh Jain 1 · 0⤊ 1⤋