Question

1. Briefly explain how free() determines the amount of memory to be freed from the heap.
2. What are the additional hardware capabilities necessary to support virtual memory?

Answer 1

First of all, we should know about, what is free()?

free() is used to deallocate the memory allocations, malloc( ), calloc( ), etc, and return it to heap so that it can be used for other purposes. The argument of free() is the pointer to the memory which is to be freed.

How free() determines the amount of memory to be freed from the heap?

In the time of dynamic memory allocation techniques for memory allocation functions, then this process is done in the actual heap section. It creates one word larger than the requested size.

Virtual memory:

Virtual memory is a technique used in the operating systems of computers. The Memory Management Unit is a part of the virtual memory.

One of the main additional hardware capabilities necessary to support virtual memory is TLB. A translation lookaside buffer is a memory cache that is used to reduce the time taken to access a user's memory location. TLB is a part of the chip's memory management unit. The TLB stores the recent translations of virtual memory to physical memory and it can be called an address-translation cache.

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