What maps virtual addresses to physical addresses?

What maps virtual addresses to physical addresses?

• A. Page
• B. Heap
• C. Cache
• D. Register

Answer: (A)

Address translation in a virtual memory system uses paging. In paging, virtual memory is divided into fixed-size pages, and physical memory is divided into frames of the same size. The hardware (with the page table) maps each virtual page to a corresponding physical frame, translating a virtual address to a physical address by combining the frame number with the offset inside the page. This paging mechanism is what performs the mapping from virtual addresses to physical addresses, making the page the unit that does the mapping. Heap is just a region for dynamic allocation, not the mechanism that maps addresses. Cache is a separate fast memory layer that uses its own addressing and tagging strategies, and registers are storage for operands and addresses during instruction execution, not the address-translation mechanism.

Address translation in a virtual memory system uses paging. In paging, virtual memory is divided into fixed-size pages, and physical memory is divided into frames of the same size. The hardware (with the page table) maps each virtual page to a corresponding physical frame, translating a virtual address to a physical address by combining the frame number with the offset inside the page. This paging mechanism is what performs the mapping from virtual addresses to physical addresses, making the page the unit that does the mapping.

Heap is just a region for dynamic allocation, not the mechanism that maps addresses. Cache is a separate fast memory layer that uses its own addressing and tagging strategies, and registers are storage for operands and addresses during instruction execution, not the address-translation mechanism.