What is the technique called when the operating system uses disk space as an extension of RAM?

What is the technique called when the operating system uses disk space as an extension of RAM?

• A. Virtual memory
• B. Cache memory
• C. Virtual disk
• D. Swap space

Answer: (A)

Virtual memory is the technique where the operating system treats disk space as an extension of RAM. When RAM starts to fill, the system moves less-used memory pages out to a reserved area on disk, freeing up RAM for active tasks. Later, those pages are swapped back in as needed. This creates the illusion of a larger, continuous address space and allows programs to run that require more memory than physically present. It’s slower than using real RAM because disk access is slower, but it enables multitasking with large or many programs. Cache memory is a small, fast storage close to the CPU used to speed up frequent data access, not to extend RAM. A virtual disk isn’t the standard term for this concept. Swap space refers to the disk area used to hold swapped-out pages as part of virtual memory, but the overall technique is virtual memory.

Virtual memory is the technique where the operating system treats disk space as an extension of RAM. When RAM starts to fill, the system moves less-used memory pages out to a reserved area on disk, freeing up RAM for active tasks. Later, those pages are swapped back in as needed. This creates the illusion of a larger, continuous address space and allows programs to run that require more memory than physically present. It’s slower than using real RAM because disk access is slower, but it enables multitasking with large or many programs.

Cache memory is a small, fast storage close to the CPU used to speed up frequent data access, not to extend RAM. A virtual disk isn’t the standard term for this concept. Swap space refers to the disk area used to hold swapped-out pages as part of virtual memory, but the overall technique is virtual memory.