CST334 Week 4

This week’s module covered a lot about how memory virtualization actually works, and honestly, it tied together a lot of things that were confusing before. The big topics were free-space management, paging, swapping, and translation lookaside buffers, TLB’s. Even though these ideas are all different, I started noticing how they connect to each other as part of a bigger system.

Free-space management made the most sense right away because the examples clearly showed how fragmentation can mess everything up. It also helped explain why paging uses fixed-size units. Then we moved into TLBs, and that was one of my “aha” moments. Thinking of a TLB as basically a super fast “cheat sheet” that saves recent translations made the whole idea of speeding up memory access feel a lot more real.

Multi-level paging was one of the topics I had to reread a couple times. The part that tripped me up was how page tables get so massive that you literally can’t store them as one giant table. Once I realized multi-level paging is basically a way to avoid wasting memory on empty areas, it started clicking for me. Swapping also made sense once I pictured it as the OS moving less-used pages to the hard drive just to keep things running.

The hardest part for me this week was page-replacement policies. I get the general idea, pick which page should get kicked out, but comparing policies and trying to understand why each one does better or worse in certain situations was a little overwhelming. I also really struggled with the BELADY caching policy.

My biggest realization this week was how all these ideas build on each other. TLBs make translations fast, multi-level paging keeps memory overhead low, swapping lets us pretend we have more RAM than we do, and replacement policies decide what stays or goes when memory gets tight.

Looking ahead, I’m curious how this ties into virtualization as a whole and how real systems handle memory under heavy workloads. This module definitely helped me feel more confident with virtual memory and paging.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Week 4 - Goals!

 Part 1: Set your Educational Goals My educational goal in the CS program is to graduate with a bachelor’s degree in computer science with a strong understanding of software development, systems architecture, and AI systems. I hope to continue to maintain a GPA of at least 3.5 or above, complete internships, and build a portfolio of coding projects. I will work to improve my problem solving skills and work well with my team members on projects. This goal motivates me to keep pushing because it goes further than graduating, it is the start of my life, my career. I will track my progress through grades, internships, and my ability to apply what I have learned to the real world. Part Two: Set your Career Goals My career goal is to become a systems architect at the well-known company, NVIDIA. Working on the design and optimization of hardware or software integration for AI and GPU based systems is a dream. I can see myself contributing to the next generation of computing solutions, whe...
Read more

Week 2 - Second week of class!

Image
Part 1: Review and Reflect Learning Strategy The top three items that I am good at is making a schedule, picking good study habits, and taking good notes. The top three items that I feel I am weak in is test taking, essay examinations, and not reading aloud to myself. I always try to follow the same schedule each week because I am a habitual person. I find repetition and using flash cards to help me study. I love taking notes, it helps me retain more information. I struggle in a testing environment because I get in my head, which is the same struggle when it comes to essay examinations. I enjoy reading my work or assignments out to myself because I feel like I do retain more, but I will try reading in my head to see if I benefit from this! Part 2: Preview Time Management Skills Part 3: Project Management Basics A project is a task that ends with accomplishing a goal or creating something. There are three things that describe a project as a whole, the time it will take to complete this ...
Read more

Week 4 - Interview with Industry Expert

Interview with Josh Hobson:      For this assignment I chose to interview my uncle, Josh Hobson, the current Direct of Technology at Santa Monica Studios, a well-known video game development company. He has a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from California State University, Bakersfield, and a Master’s in Engineering from Arizona State University. I chose to interview him not only because of his many accomplishments, but because I have always admired his passion for technology and his creative mind. His experiences, from graphics programming to technical leadership, offered a unique and personal perspective on what success looks like in the gaming and technology industry.     Josh shared that his career passion began when he was young. His love for working on computers sparked an early interest in the field. He explained that his fascination with computer graphics ultimately led him to specialize in rendering systems, where he focused on per...
Read more