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I am reading memory management schemes in Operating System.I got confused from this Question

How virtual addresses work on computers without virtual memory?

Is this possible virtual address can work without virtual memory?

I have little bit knowledge about OS so i asked this question.

1 Answer 1

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Virtual addresses can't "work", if they don't exist. Virtual addresses are addresses inside an instance of virtual memory.

Virtual memory is not automatically given by some hardware though, it's an implementation of the OS. If the installed OS on a computer implements virtual memory, then programs may access their virtual addresses.

All a computer really requires to make an implementation possible is physical memory and some way in the CPU achitecture for the OS to intercept CPU instructions that directly want to access memory.

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3 Comments

"It's not some kind of hardware" is misleading, virtual memory needs a hardware support to work; in case of an OS running on top of a virtual machine, the virtual machine NEEDs to simulate an architecture that supports virtual memory.
I think that's better rephrased by: "Virtual Memory needs both OS and hardware support"; just a suggestion :)
Agreed, with Adel, hardwared called the memory manager with what's called a translation lookaside buffer implement the virtual memory, but they are programmed by the operating system to know how that memory is laid out.

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