Question

A virtual memory system uses a First In First Out (FIFO) page replacement policy and allocates a fixed number of frames to a process. Consider the following statements.

P: Increasing the number of page frames allocated to a process sometimes increases the page fault rate
Q: Some programs do not exhibit locality of reference Which of the following is TRUE?

A. Both P and Q are true, and Q is the reason for P
B. Both P and Q are true, but Q is not the reason for P
C. P is false but Q is true
D. Both P and Q are false

Answer 1

B. Both P and Q are true, but Q is not the reason for P

How to explain

Statement P implies that increasing the number of page frames allotted to a process might paradoxically escalate the page fault rate.

This occurs due to a phenomenon called thrashing, where despite having more frames, the system struggles to locate free frames, leading to an increased rate of page faults.

Statement Q refers to programs that lack the principle of locality, which means they don't exhibit predictable memory access patterns. While both statements are true, statement Q isn't the cause behind statement P; instead, it's an independent observation related to memory access patterns within programs.