What is page fault?, Operating System

Assignment Help:

What is page fault?

In the computer storage technology a page fault is an exception which is raised by the memory management unit when a requested page isn't mapped in physical memory. This exception is passed on to the OS (operating system) which is able to then try to handle the exception by making the required page accessible at a location in physical memory.

For instance a page fault may take place when a program requests a page in memory and the system can't find it at the requested location. If the page is elsewhere in memory then the fault is called as a soft page fault. If the page should be retrieved from disk, the fault is called as a hard page fault.

Opposing to what its name might suggest a page fault is never a fatal error. Actually, it is a relatively normal occurrence in any OS operating system that utilizes virtual memory in order to increase the amount of memory available to programs. The term General Page Fault is habitually found printed on the screens of computers running a Microsoft Windows operating system when a serious error has take placed in the paging algorithms that handle an ordinary and generally harmless page fault. This kind of paging error takes place in the software handling the exception, and isn't directly related to the page fault itself, which take place in hardware.

Page faults by their extremely nature degrade a program's or operating system's performance and is able to cause thrashing.  Optimizing any or every program's memory usage and commonly making more physical memory available reduces the number of page faults that occur, and get better the program's or the entire system's performance.

 

 


Related Discussions:- What is page fault?

What are the various layers of a file system, What are the various layers o...

What are the various layers of a file system? The file system is composed of many dissimilar levels. Each level in the design uses the feature of the lower levels to make new f

What is meant by the phrase thread-safe, The term thread-safe in computer p...

The term thread-safe in computer programming describes that routine or portion of the program that may be called from multiple programming threads without uncalled for interactions

Perl script, Write a Perl script assignGrades.pl to assign letter grades to...

Write a Perl script assignGrades.pl to assign letter grades to the students.

How virtual memory is implemented, How Virtual memory is implemented Vi...

How Virtual memory is implemented Virtual memory can be implemented along with Segmentation and Paging

Explain the proper distribution of functionality and code, Explain the Prop...

Explain the Proper Distribution of Functionality and Code It is important to note that the bandwidth of the server operating system and server processor availability is fixed.

Explain process scheduling, Explain Process scheduling Process scheduli...

Explain Process scheduling Process scheduling consists of the subsequent sub-functions: 1.      Scheduling : Selects the process to be implement next on the CPU 2.      D

How can the index blocks be implemented, How can the index blocks be implem...

How can the index blocks be implemented in the indexed allocation scheme? The index block can be implemented as follows a. Multilevel scheme b. Linked scheme c. Combin

Memory management, what is segmentation as it refers to operating system

what is segmentation as it refers to operating system

Which algorithm makes the most efficient use of memory, Question : (a) ...

Question : (a) The dynamic allocation problem is how to satisfy a request of size n from a list of free holes into memory. The best-fit, first-fit and worst-fit strategies are

Explain clustered file organization, Clustered file organization A cl...

Clustered file organization A clustered file is also called a B-tree-clustered file is a tree-structured file in which records with adjacent index values are clustered toget

Write Your Message!

Captcha
Free Assignment Quote

Assured A++ Grade

Get guaranteed satisfaction & time on delivery in every assignment order you paid with us! We ensure premium quality solution document along with free turntin report!

All rights reserved! Copyrights ©2019-2020 ExpertsMind IT Educational Pvt Ltd