What is virtual memory and how is it different than RAM?
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Don’t see too many ELI5 answers here. Here’s a stab at it:
RAM is your computer’s physical memory. When a program runs on your computer the operating system tells it that it can use all the memory it wants. So a program can write or read from a memory address and not worry about it being reserved for other programs.
In reality lots of programs are running and competing for memory space. The addresses each program gets to use are called virtual memory because they don’t relate to a real physical memory address. The operating system decides where to direct the virtual addresses to real physical addresses to keep programs from interfering with each other.
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