This week the main topic we covered was memory virtualization. Many of the details of how memory is used by an operating system are too much to cover all at once, but I enjoyed learning the basics. The operating system does a lot of work for users when it comes to allocating memory for specific processes, which makes things much more accessible and user friendly. Modern operating systems are so far abstracted from the hardware that many users don’t even know what “memory” means in the context of their device.
In the early days of computers, all memory allocation had to be done by the user. As one might imagine, this makes for a computer that is very difficult to use, hence the need for operating systems. On a basic level, an OS is a bunch of running processes which allow users to run whatever processes they want without having to worry about memory allocation.
It is strange to think about how far modern computers have advanced when it comes to accessibility and ease of use. Operating systems like android and IOS do a lot of work to keep memory available so that a user can open any app at any time without much lag.
ChompingTheBit 