Principles of Operating Systems

CMSC 421-01 - Fall 2018

Homework 2

50 points total

Due by 11:59PM EST on Tuesday, December 11th

Please provide written responses to the following questions. Each response should be about a paragraph or two in length — there is no need to write us a book for each, just be sure to answer the question thoroughly. Each question is worth 10 points.

  1. Describe the operation of a Translation Lookaside Buffer (TLB) in memory management. Why is it advantageous to use a TLB versus using a page table directly?
  2. Compare and contrast the use of segmentation and paging in memory management. Be sure to give several pros and cons of each type of memory management in your response.
  3. Describe why page sizes used for paging in memory management are always powers-of-two in size. Be sure to detail how the hardware used for paging contributes to this.
  4. Describe what a page fault is, including the operations that the OS must undertake in order to service a page fault from a user process.
  5. Describe the concept of virtual memory, including the many advantages it gives to user programs running on modern OSes.

You must submit a PDF file of the answers to these questions on the Homework 2 assignment on Blackboard. You may prepare your responses in any word processing application of your choosing, but you must submit a PDF file. Do not submit Microsoft Word/Apple Pages/LibreOffice documents with your responses. You must convert to a PDF file before submitting or you will lose points.

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