What is virtual memory and how is it different than RAM?
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Virtual memory means two things depending on who’s asking:
It means the operating system swaps out what’s in RAM and what’s on disk when programs aren’t looking, when to hopefully make better use of your RAM. This is what it means when Microsoft says it.
Or, it means the CPU checks a big table of memory regions, to see whether the memory has been moved somewhere else or the OS needs to get involved, every single time it accesses memory. This is what it means when Intel says it. This feature allows Microsoft to do the disk swappy thing, but it also enables a bunch of other stuff that’s taken for granted, like protecting one program from bugs in another program by making sure only that program’s memory is allowed to be accessed when it’s running.
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