Discussion
Physical memory that is not currently allocated to any process is tracked by the operating system in
Answer: C
Correct answer: a free-frame list
The operating system maintains a free-frame list recording which physical frames are unallocated. When a page must be brought in, a frame is taken from that list; when a process terminates or a page is evicted, its frames are returned to it. If the list is empty, a victim page must be chosen by the replacement algorithm and evicted first - written back if it is dirty, discarded if clean. Real systems keep a reserve rather than letting the list run to zero, because finding a frame at the moment one is needed adds latency to a page fault. A background process reclaims pages when the free count falls below a threshold, so a frame is usually available immediately. The other options are all per-process or hardware structures with different jobs: a page table maps one process’s pages, the TLB caches recent translations, and the process control block holds a process’s saved state. None of them has any view of which physical frames are free system-wide.
Post your comment
Please log in or register to post a comment.
Examination Categories
- SSC Exams
- Banking Exams
- Teaching Exams
- Civil Services Exams
- Railways Exams
- Engineering Recruitment Exams
- Defence Exams
- State Government Exams
- Police Exams
- Insurance Exams
- Nursing Exams
- Other Government Exams
- NRA CET
- PG Entrance Exams
- Campus Placement
- MBA Entrance Exams
- CUET and UG Entrance
- Judiciary Exams
- Regulatory Body Exams
- Software Development