CPA CPA Operating Systems & Process Management 2

Question 1

What is virtual memory in modern operating systems?

Accepted Answer

A technique that uses disk space to extend apparent RAM

Answer

Virtual memory uses secondary storage to give processes the illusion of more RAM than physically exists by swapping pages in and out.

Question 2

In memory management, what is a 'page fault'?

Accepted Answer

An interrupt triggered when a process accesses a page not currently in physical memory

Answer

A page fault is an interrupt raised by the MMU when the requested memory page is not present in RAM and must be loaded from disk.

Question 3

Which inter-process communication (IPC) method provides a one-way data stream between a producer and consumer process?

Accepted Answer

Pipe

Answer

A pipe provides a unidirectional byte stream that lets one process write data which another process reads.

Question 4

What is the difference between a process and a thread?

Accepted Answer

A process has its own memory space; threads within a process share the same memory space

Answer

A process has an independent address space, while threads within the same process share the same address space but have separate stacks and registers.

Question 5

What does the fork() system call do in Unix/Linux?

Accepted Answer

Creates a child process that is a copy of the calling process

Answer

fork() duplicates the calling process, creating a child with the same code, data, and file descriptors but a different PID.

(CPA) Certified Associate Programmer Practice Test

(CPA) Certified Associate Programmer Practice Test

CPA CPA Operating Systems & Process Management 2