In final week of our OS class we focused a lot on filesystems and storage. One topic that came up was persistence, which is maybe is maybe serendipitous considering the timing of everything. Persistence is a concept that is used a lot in modern computing, especially in mobile operating systems.
In simple terms, persistence is the idea that process can create a system state that exists longer than its own lifespan. This is a useful trick that we usually don’t think about, but without persistence computers would be much worse at multitasking. As an example, on a mobile OS, whenever you switch focus from one app to another, the state of the app is saved so that it is available when you return.
ChompingTheBit 