Memory is a hardware device that is used to store the information either temporary or permanently. In this article, I have discussed the differences between virtual and cache memory. A Cache memory is a high-speed memory which is used to reduce the access time for data. On the other hands, Virtual memory is not exactly a physical memory it is a technique which extends the capacity of the main memory beyond its limit. The major difference between virtual memory and the cache memory is that a … [Read more...]

Semaphore and Monitor both allow processes to access the shared resources in mutual exclusion. Both are the process synchronization tool. Instead, they are very different from each other. Where Semaphore is an integer variable which can be operated only by wait() and signal() operation apart from the initialization. On the other hand, the Monitor type is an abstract data type whose construct allow one process to get activate at one time. In this article, we will discuss the differences … [Read more...]

In this article, we will discuss the differences between Multitasking and Multithreading. People generally get confused between these terms. On one hand, Multitasking is a logical extension to multiprogramming, and on the other hand, Multithreading is thread-based multitasking. The basic difference between Multitasking and multithreading is that Multitasking allows  CPU to perform multiple tasks (program, process, task, threads) simultaneously whereas, Multithreading allows multiple threads … [Read more...]

Most of the people get confused with the terms buffering and caching. Though both holds the data temporarily but, they are different from each other. Buffering is basically used to match the transmission speed between sender and receiver. On the other hands, Cache fastens the access speed of the repeatedly used data. They also share some other differences which have been discussed in the comparison chart below. Content: Buffering Vs Caching Comparison Chart Definition Key … [Read more...]

We have many external devices attached to the CPU like a mouse, keyboard, scanner, printer, etc. These devices also need CPU attention. Suppose, a CPU is busy in displaying a PDF and you click the window media player icon on the desktop. Though the CPU does not have any idea when an event like this would occur, but it has to respond to such inputs from the I/O devices. Interrupt and Polling are the two ways to handle the events generated by the devices that can happen at any moment while CPU … [Read more...]

Memory is a large array of bytes, where each byte has its own address. The memory allocation can be classified into two methods contiguous memory allocation and non-contiguous memory allocation. The major difference between Contiguous and Noncontiguous memory allocation is that the contiguous memory allocation assigns the consecutive blocks of memory to a process requesting for memory. On the contrary, the noncontiguous memory allocation assigns the separate memory blocks at a different … [Read more...]

Whenever a process is loaded or removed from the physical memory block, it creates a small hole in memory space which is called fragment. Due to fragmentation, the system fails in allocating the contiguous memory space to a process even though it have the requested amount of memory but, in a non-contiguous manner. The fragmentation is further classified into two categories Internal and External Fragmentation. Both the internal and external classification affects data accessing speed of the … [Read more...]

The memory management in the operating system is an essential functionality, which allows the allocation of memory to the processes for execution and deallocates the memory when the process is no longer needed. In this article, we will discuss two memory management schemes paging and segmentation. The basic difference between paging and segmentation is that, "page" is a fixed-sized block whereas, a "segment" is a variable-sized block. We will discuss some more differences between Paging and … [Read more...]

Spooling and buffering are the two ways by which I/O subsystems improve the performance and efficiency of the computer by using a storage space in main memory or on the disk. The basic difference between Spooling and Buffering is that Spooling overlaps the I/O of one job with the execution of another job while the buffering overlaps I/O of one job with the execution of the same job. Let us find some more differences between spooling and buffering with the help of comparison chart shown … [Read more...]

Process synchronization plays an important role in maintaining the consistency of shared data. Both the software and hardware solutions are present for handling critical section problem. But hardware solutions for critical section problem are quite difficult to implement. In today's article, we will discuss two software based solution to handle critical section problem i.e. Semaphore and Mutex. The basic difference between semaphore and mutex is that semaphore is a signalling mechanism i.e. … [Read more...]