Which of the following is/are advantages of virtual memory? a) Faster access…
1999
Which of the following is/are advantages of virtual memory?
a) Faster access to memory on an average.
b) Processes can be given protected address spaces.
c) Linker can assign addresses independent of where the program will be loaded in physical memory.
d) Programs larger than the physical memory size can be run.
- A.
a and b
- B.
b and c
- C.
b and d
- D.
All of the above
Attempted by 6 students.
Show answer & explanation
Correct answer: C
The correct statements are b and d.
Statement a is false: virtual memory does not give faster average memory access. Address translation and possible page faults add overhead, so access can be slower than direct physical-memory access.
Statement b is true: virtual address spaces help isolate processes, so each process can be given a protected address space.
Statement c is not treated as an advantage of virtual memory in this question. Link-time address assignment is not the key benefit being tested here; virtual-to-physical mapping is handled by the OS/hardware at run time.
Statement d is true: with virtual memory/demand paging, a program can execute even when its virtual address space or program size is larger than available physical memory, because only needed pages must be resident at a time.