Memory Management

What Does Memory Management?

Memory management is a broad term that incorporates all processes and methodologies for the effective use, allocation, monitoring and management of computer memory.

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Memory management allows an underlying computer or operating system (OS) to dynamically distribute memory across all running processes, while ensuring optimal performance.

Techopedia Memory Management

Memory management deals with the management of a computer’s physical memory or random access memory (RAM). Typically, each computer has preinstalled main memory, which is used for processing running application and services. No matter how great memory capacity is, it cannot accommodate all ready/running programs or processes simultaneously. Thus, memory management helps allocate necessary memory space for each process, moving it in between hard drive and memory, and assigning priorities and the overall organization of the programs/processes. Memory management is usually performed and managed by the host operating system.

Memory management also encompasses other non-volatile memories within a system, such as cache memory and virtual memory.

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Margaret Rouse

Margaret Rouse is an award-winning technical writer and teacher known for her ability to explain complex technical subjects to a non-technical, business audience. Over the past twenty years her explanations have appeared on TechTarget websites and she's been cited as an authority in articles by the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine and Discovery Magazine.Margaret's idea of a fun day is helping IT and business professionals learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages. If you have a suggestion for a new definition or how to improve a technical explanation, please email Margaret or contact her…