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In a system using segmentation, computer memory addresses consist of a segment id and an offset within the segment. [3] A hardware memory management unit (MMU) is responsible for translating the segment and offset into a physical address, and for performing checks to make sure the translation can be done and that the reference to that segment and offset is permitted.
The general operation of the segmentation unit is otherwise unchanged. The paging unit may be enabled or disabled; if disabled, operation is the same as on the 80286. If the paging unit is enabled, addresses in a segment are now virtual addresses, rather than physical addresses as they were on the 80286.
In computer operating systems, memory paging (or swapping on some Unix-like systems) is a memory management scheme by which a computer stores and retrieves data from secondary storage [a] for use in main memory. [1] In this scheme, the operating system retrieves data from secondary storage in same-size blocks called pages.
Segmentation and paging can be used together by dividing each segment into pages; systems with this memory structure, such as Multics and IBM System/38, are usually paging-predominant, segmentation providing memory protection. [34] [35] [36] In the Intel 80386 and later IA-32 processors, the segments reside in a 32-bit linear, paged address ...
Flat memory model or linear memory model refers to a memory addressing paradigm in which "memory appears to the program as a single contiguous address space." [1] The CPU can directly (and linearly) address all of the available memory locations without having to resort to any sort of bank switching, memory segmentation or paging schemes.
A memory management unit (MMU), sometimes called paged memory management unit (PMMU), [1] is a computer hardware unit that examines all memory references on the memory bus, translating these requests, known as virtual memory addresses, into physical addresses in main memory. In modern systems, programs generally have addresses that access the ...
Similarly, a page frame is the smallest fixed-length contiguous block of physical memory into which memory pages are mapped by the operating system. [ 1 ] [ 2 ] [ 3 ] A transfer of pages between main memory and an auxiliary store, such as a hard disk drive , is referred to as paging or swapping.
Physical memory can contain pages belonging to many processes. Pages can be held on disk if seldom used, or if physical memory is full. In the diagram above, some pages are not in physical memory. A page table is a data structure used by a virtual memory system in a computer to store mappings between virtual addresses and physical addresses.