Managing Your Memory
Another key role of the Operating System is to manage memory resources, there are two separate conceptual levels of memory. Firstly, physical memory – this is what the operating system sees, and it relates directly to your actual physical hardware. Secondly, there is virtual memory, which is what a programmer will see when developing an application to run within an operating system. Virtual memory is viewed as limitless, and is not dependent on the physical memory available – so applications can be programmed to run on systems with different physical memory capabilities.