Describe the term Swapping

Question

Describe the term Swapping? What are its various advantages?

Answer 1

The method of bringing a process to the main memory from the secondary memory and vice-versa is termed as swapping. It is the job of operating system of most helpful processes and keeping them in the main memory.

The process needs to be in memory only whenever executed. If the next ready-to-execute methods do not get free main memory, then the already executed processes are temporarily stored in the secondary memory such as disk and so on.

Therefore the process of swapping gives the following merits:

a) Increased CPU utilization.

b) Increased multi-programming.

c) Execution of the programs bigger than memory.

Though, the context time for swapping is a related overhead.