Journal Entry - Week 4 (CST 334)

  1. Identify the topics we covered in class -- you can start by listing them

This week, we learned about a variety of topics including free space management, translating lookaside buffers, multi level paging, and swapping.


  1. Explain what each of the topics were in your own terms -- take the identified topics and add a sentence or two describing them

Free space management is when the OS keeps track of which memory blocks are free so it can allocate space to processes when memory is needed. The translation lookaside buffer is a small fast cache that stores recently used virtual-to-physical address translations. This technique is used to speed up memory access. Mutli level paging is a system that splits page tables into multiple levels to reduce memory overhead specifically for large address spaces. Finally, swapping is the process of moving data between RAM and the disk/SSD.


  1. Identify least-understood topics -- of these topics, which was the hardest for you to write the descriptions?

For me, the least understood topic was multi level paging as it feels abstract and a bit complex.


  1. Explain the nature of your confusion -- for these difficult topics, what pieces of them make sense and what pieces are difficult to describe?

The piece that made sense to me is the need and purpose; however, the underlying process and mechanism is difficult to describe.


  1. Identify "aha" moments -- which topic did you find it easiest to write about, and why did it make sense?

My “aha” moment was the swapping process as it clearly described a process I was familiar with but did not know in great detail. It makes sense since it balances performance and scarcity in the sense that RAM is much faster than the disk but also significantly in less quantity than disk. So swapping addresses a very important need in software engineering.


  1. Ask questions -- what do you think will come next?  Are there any gaps that don't seem to be explained yet?

Will we learn about how datacenters swap data between RAM and disks on such a large scale? There does not seem to be any gaps at this time.


  1. What connections did you see to other classes and applications -- have you used/heard/thought about these topics before?

I made a connection to my first CS course in high school where I learned the fundamentals of computer hardware including the difference between RAM and disks.


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