Question

9. Answer the following questions related to the size of a program and memory space.

A) What is it that determines the total amount of virtual memory space a computer system can have?

B) What is it that determines the size of the largest program that can be executed on a single machine that has only one core?

C) What is it that ultimately limits the number of programs that a given machine can run?

Answer 1

9.a) The total amount of virtual memory space can have in a computer system is determined on the amount of physical memory spaces. However, the size of virtual memory space depends on systems. It varies from system to system. For example, in Linux system, the amount of virtual memory space should be double of the amount of physical memory space. Thus, for a PC running with 4GB of RAM should have 8GB swap memory space. But, some other systems like Windows, generally the maximum size of the swap file should be 1.5 times of the amount of physical memory space.

9.b) The size of the largest program that can be executed on a single machine that has only one core is determined on the size of the physical memory space. Since the size of the virtual memory space depends on the size of the physical memory, therefore indirectly, it also depends on the size of the virtual memory.

9. c) In older systems like DOS systems, known as single-task operating system can run one program at a time. In newer systems like . Linux/UNIX/Windows that are known as multi-tasking operating system can run many programs simultaneously. For example, 32-bit Testlimit tool andrunning on a 2GB 64-bit Windows XP system created about 8396 processes. Total number of programs that can run on a system depends upon OS, and physical memory.