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Browse All TopicsAs per my understanding I assume:
Swapping: Moving memory pages from Physical RAM to Swap (Hard disk)
Paging: Moving memory pages from Swap (Hard disk) to Physical RAM.
Please let me know the differences with an example. Many thanks!
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by: omarfaridPosted on 2009-04-22 at 22:24:33ID: 24212005
pagging and swapping are both to and from memory and both are part of memory managment. When a process starts, only the required pages (instructions, data, etc) are brought in from disk to memory. When the process requires a page which is not in memory then it is brought in. When the memory becomes nearly full, the system starts pagging out to the swap area the modified pages, and then vacate the space used by these pages. when these pages which are on the swap area are needed again some other pages are vacated and hese required ones are brought to memory. This is called pagging. When the pagging rate (to swap area) is very high then it is no more manageble and the whole process and its pages are written to the swap area to vacate larger memory pages. This is called process swap out. The process execution is then stopped till it is brought back from swap area (by may be swapping out some other process) to memory. This is called process swap in.
In short, pagging takes place as long as available memory it is acceabtable level and pagging rate is also not causing an over head on the CPU. Swapping starts when available memory is not meeting the demand of running processes and pagging rate is high and impacting CPU. Both works together as memory management.