Question

Using a pager :

a) increases the swap time
b) decreases the swap time
c) decreases the amount of physical memory needed
d) increases the amount of physical memory needed

Answer 1

Using a pager in an operating system increases the swap time due to the overhead of disk operations and decreases the amount of physical memory needed by allowing the use of virtual memory.

Step-by-step explanation:

Impact of Using a Pager on Memory Management

When discussing the impact of using a pager (paging), it is important to understand its role in memory management within an operating system. In the context of operating systems, using a pager is related to the concept of paging, which is a storage mechanism that allows the operating system to retrieve data from secondary storage for pages that are not currently held in the main memory. This technique decreases the amount of physical memory needed because it allows the system to use disk space as virtual memory, thus accommodating more processes than the actual physical memory could otherwise hold.

However, one misconception about using a pager is that it affects the swap time. The swap time is related to the amount of time it takes to move pages in and out of physical memory. Generally, using a pager increases the swap time due to additional overhead of reading from or writing to a disk, as opposed to quick access from the physical memory.

In summary, the correct answer to the question is that using a pager increases the swap time and decreases the amount of physical memory needed.