Computer Multitasking - Memory Swapping

Memory Swapping

Use of a swap file or swap partition is a way for the operating system to provide more memory than is physically available by keeping portions of the primary memory in secondary storage. While multitasking and memory swapping are two completely unrelated techniques, they are very often used together, as swapping memory allows more tasks to be loaded at the same time. Typically, a multitasking system allows another process to run when the running process hits a point where it has to wait for some portion of memory to be reloaded from secondary storage.

Read more about this topic:  Computer Multitasking

Famous quotes containing the words memory and/or swapping:

    Twenty or thirty years ago, in the army, we had a lot of obscure adventures, and years later we tell them at parties, and suddenly we realize that those two very difficult years of our lives have become lumped together into a few episodes that have lodged in our memory in a standardized form, and are always told in a standardized way, in the same words. But in fact that lump of memories has nothing whatsoever to do with our experience of those two years in the army and what it has made of us.
    Václav Havel (b. 1936)

    sailing
    In sunlight smiling under their goggles swapping batons back and
    forth
    And He who jumped without a chute and was handed one by a diving
    Buddy.
    James Dickey (b. 1923)