virtual memory

virtual memory

1. virtual memory is part of the hard drive used as an extension to the RAM

2. it is used when the computer does not have enough RAM to hold all the data and programs that a user wants

3. a specific area of the hard drive will be allocated to temporarily store data from RAM that is currently not needed, while data that is needed will be loaded into RAM

4. the more RAM a computer has the less virtual memory will be needed. that is why inserting more RAM will significantly improve the performance of a computer

5. virtual memory is slower than RAM

6. a process running on the computer may need to store data in the physical memory

7. if there is no free memory, the memory manager will 'swap out' some of the data stored in RAM to the swap area on the hard disk drive and 'swap in' the requested data into the now free area

8. usually the least recently used stored is swapped