Virtual memory is the separation of user logical memory from physical memory. This separation allows an extremely large virtual memory to be provided for programmers when only a smaller physical memory is available.
Virtual memory makes the task of programming much easier, because the
programmer no longer needs to worry about the amount of physical memory available for execution of program.
It is the process of increasing the apparent size of a computer's RAM by using a section of the hard disk storage as an extension of RAM.As computers have RAM of capacity 64 or 128 MB to be used by the CPU resources which is not sufficient to run all applications that are used by most users in their expected way and all at once.
Example:
Consider, an e-mail program, a web browser and a word processor is loaded into RAM simultaneously; the 64 MB space is not enough to store all these programs. Without a virtual memory, a message “You cannot load any more applications. Please close an application to load a new one.” would be displayed. By using a virtual memory, a computer can look for empty areas of RAM which is not being used currently and copies them on to the hard disk device. Thus RAM is freed to load new applications. Actually it is done automatically, the user do not even know that it is happening, and the user feels like RAM has unlimited space even though the RAM capacity is 32 MB. It is a process of increasing computer’s RAM by using a section of the hard disk storage as an extension of RAM.
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