Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer)
Newsgroups: net.arch
Subject: Re: Paging
Message-ID: <7111@utzoo.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 11-Sep-86 13:42:18 EDT
Article-I.D.: utzoo.7111
Posted: Thu Sep 11 13:42:18 1986
Date-Received: Thu, 11-Sep-86 13:42:18 EDT
References: <8494@duke.duke.UUCP> <147@eneevax.UUCP>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
Lines: 22

> >"Virtual memory", strictly speaking, refers to memory that acts like it's
> >always there but sometimes isn't.
> 
> I would quibble slightly.  To me, virtual memory refers to a memory space
> that is different than the physical memory of the machine...

It would be reasonable to use "virtual memory" to denote that concept, but
that is not in fact the concept that it *does* denote.  In the same way,
"RAM" stands for "random-access memory", which one would think should include
things like EPROMs... but in fact "RAM" is now an idiom whose meaning is
not identical to the literal meaning of the words it is derived from.  So
with "virtual memory".

> This is not what most people - including me - usually mean when casually
> talking about virtual memory...

That's because your casual talk uses the phrase in its correct, idiomatic,
meaning, rather than attempting to read it literally and impute to it a
meaning that it never had.
-- 
				Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
				{allegra,ihnp4,decvax,pyramid}!utzoo!henry