Swap memory in the context of Page (computer memory)

Swap memory in the context of Page (computer memory)

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⭐ Core Definition: Swap memory

In computer operating systems, memory paging is a memory management scheme that allows the physical memory used by a program to be non-contiguous. This also helps avoid the problem of memory fragmentation and requiring compaction to reduce fragmentation.

Paging is often combined with the related technique of allocating and freeing page frames and storing pages on and retrieving them from secondary storage in order to allow the aggregate size of the address spaces to exceed the physical memory of the system. For historical reasons, this technique is sometimes referred to as swapping.

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Swap memory in the context of THE multiprogramming system

The THE multiprogramming system (THE OS) was a computer operating system designed by a team led by Edsger W. Dijkstra, described in monographs in 1965-66 and published in 1968.Dijkstra never named the system; "THE" is simply the abbreviation of "Technische Hogeschool Eindhoven", then the name (in Dutch) of the Eindhoven University of Technology of the Netherlands. The THE system was primarily a batch system that supported multitasking; it was not designed as a multi-user operating system. It was much like the SDS 940, but "the set of processes in the THE system was static".

The THE system apparently introduced the first forms of software-based paged virtual memory (the Electrologica X8 did not support hardware-based memory management), freeing programs from being forced to use physical locations on the drum memory. It did this by using a modified ALGOL compiler (the only programming language supported by Dijkstra's system) to "automatically generate calls to system routines, which made sure the requested information was in memory, swapping if necessary". Paged virtual memory was also used for buffering input/output (I/O) device data, and for a significant portion of the operating system code, and nearly all the ALGOL 60 compiler. In this system, semaphores were used as a programming construct for the first time.

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