User Virtual Address Space is a specific form of address space or memory allocation. Every process that runs on a computer system has some data and some code associated to it which is loaded to the memory during run-time. The part of the virtual address space of the process that corresponds to the process data and code in the memory is called the User Virtual Address Space for that process. In computing, an address space defines a context in which an address makes sense. ... In computing, a process is, roughly speaking, a task being run by a computer, often simultaneously with many other tasks. ... The tower of a personal computer (specifically a Power Mac G5). ... A datum is a statement accepted at face value (a given). Data is the plural of datum. ... In communications, a code is a rule for converting a piece of information (for example, a letter, word, or phrase) into another form or representation, not necessarily of the same sort. ... Memory is a property of the human mind: the ability to retain information. ... In computer science, runtime describes the operation of a computer program, the duration of its execution, from beginning to termination (compare compile time). ... VAS (short for Virtual Address Space) is a memory mapping mechanism available in modern operating systems such as Unix, Linux, and Windows NT. Overview When you run an application on a 32-bit OS, the OS creates a new process for it. ...
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In the analogy of a person's address, the addressspace would be an area of locations, such as a neighborhood, town, city, or country.
Two addresses may be numerically the same but refer to different locations, if they belong to different addressspaces.
For example, virtual-to-physical address translation is necessary to translate addresses in the virtualmemoryaddressspace to addresses in physical addressspace -- one physical address, and one or more numerically different virtualaddress, all refer to the same physical byte of RAM.
Virtualmemory or virtualmemoryaddressing is a memory management technique, used by multitasking computer operating systems wherein non-contiguous memory is presented to a software (aka process) as contiguous memory.
In technical terms, virtualmemory allows software to run in a memoryaddressspace whose size and addressing are not necessarily tied to the computer's physical memory.
Virtualmemory has been a feature of Microsoft Windows since Windows 3.0 in 1990; it was implemented in an attempt to slash the system requirements for the operating system in response to the failures of Windows 1.0 and Windows 2.0.