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Page Cache
In computing, a page cache, sometimes also called disk cache, is a transparent cache for the pages originating from a secondary storage device such as a hard disk drive (HDD) or a solid-state drive (SSD). The operating system keeps a page cache in otherwise unused portions of the main memory (RAM), resulting in quicker access to the contents of cached pages and overall performance improvements. A page cache is implemented in kernels with the paging memory management, and is mostly transparent to applications. Usually, all physical memory not directly allocated to applications is used by the operating system for the page cache. Since the memory would otherwise be idle and is easily reclaimed when applications request it, there is generally no associated performance penalty and the operating system might even report such memory as "free" or "available". When compared to main memory, hard disk drive read/writes are slow and random accesses require expensive disk seeks; as a resul ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Disk Cache (other)
Disk cache may refer to: * Disk buffer, the small amount of RAM embedded on a hard disk drive, used to store the data going to and coming from the disk platters * Page cache In computing, a page cache, sometimes also called disk cache, is a transparent cache for the pages originating from a secondary storage device such as a hard disk drive (HDD) or a solid-state drive (SSD). The operating system keeps a page cache ..., the cache of data residing on a storage device, kept by the operating systems and stored in unused main memory * General application-level caching of the data residing on a storage device {{Disambiguation zh:磁碟快取 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Process (computing)
In computing, a process is the instance of a computer program that is being executed by one or many threads. There are many different process models, some of which are light weight, but almost all processes (even entire virtual machines) are rooted in an operating system (OS) process which comprises the program code, assigned system resources, physical and logical access permissions, and data structures to initiate, control and coordinate execution activity. Depending on the OS, a process may be made up of multiple threads of execution that execute instructions concurrently. While a computer program is a passive collection of instructions typically stored in a file on disk, a process is the execution of those instructions after being loaded from the disk into memory. Several processes may be associated with the same program; for example, opening up several instances of the same program often results in more than one process being executed. Multitasking is a method to allow ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cache (computing)
In computing, a cache ( ) is a hardware or software component that stores data so that future requests for that data can be served faster; the data stored in a cache might be the result of an earlier computation or a copy of data stored elsewhere. A ''cache hit'' occurs when the requested data can be found in a cache, while a ''cache miss'' occurs when it cannot. Cache hits are served by reading data from the cache, which is faster than recomputing a result or reading from a slower data store; thus, the more requests that can be served from the cache, the faster the system performs. To be cost-effective and to enable efficient use of data, caches must be relatively small. Nevertheless, caches have proven themselves in many areas of computing, because typical computer applications access data with a high degree of locality of reference. Such access patterns exhibit temporal locality, where data is requested that has been recently requested already, and spatial locality, where ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Demand Paging
In computer operating systems, demand paging (as opposed to anticipatory paging) is a method of virtual memory management. In a system that uses demand paging, the operating system copies a disk page into physical memory only if an attempt is made to access it and that page is not already in memory (''i.e.'', if a page fault occurs). It follows that a process begins execution with none of its pages in physical memory, and many page faults will occur until most of a process's working set of pages are located in physical memory. This is an example of a lazy loading technique. Basic concept Demand paging follows that pages should only be brought into memory if the executing process demands them. This is often referred to as lazy evaluation as only those pages demanded by the process are swapped from secondary storage to main memory. Contrast this to pure swapping, where all memory for a process is swapped from secondary storage to main memory during the process startup. Common ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Library (computing)
In computer science, a library is a collection of non-volatile resources used by computer programs, often for software development. These may include configuration data, documentation, help data, message templates, pre-written code and subroutines, classes, values or type specifications. In IBM's OS/360 and its successors they are referred to as partitioned data sets. A library is also a collection of implementations of behavior, written in terms of a language, that has a well-defined interface by which the behavior is invoked. For instance, people who want to write a higher-level program can use a library to make system calls instead of implementing those system calls over and over again. In addition, the behavior is provided for reuse by multiple independent programs. A program invokes the library-provided behavior via a mechanism of the language. For example, in a simple imperative language such as C, the behavior in a library is invoked by using C's normal functi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Executable
In computing, executable code, an executable file, or an executable program, sometimes simply referred to as an executable or binary, causes a computer "to perform indicated tasks according to encoded instructions", as opposed to a data file that must be interpreted ( parsed) by a program to be meaningful. The exact interpretation depends upon the use. "Instructions" is traditionally taken to mean machine code instructions for a physical CPU. In some contexts, a file containing scripting instructions (such as bytecode) may also be considered executable. Generation of executable files Executable files can be hand-coded in machine language, although it is far more convenient to develop software as source code in a high-level language that can be easily understood by humans. In some cases, source code might be specified in assembly language instead, which remains human-readable while being closely associated with machine code instructions. The high-level language is comp ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Privilege Separation
In computer programming and computer security, privilege separation is one software-based technique for implementing the principle of least privilege. With privilege separation, a program is divided into parts which are limited to the specific privileges they require in order to perform a specific task. This is used to mitigate the potential damage of a computer security vulnerability. A common method to implement privilege separation is to have a computer program fork into two processes. The main program drops privileges, and the smaller program keeps privileges in order to perform a certain task. The two halves then communicate via a socket pair. Thus, any successful attack against the larger program will gain minimal access, even though the pair of programs will be capable of performing privileged operations. Privilege separation is traditionally accomplished by distinguishing a ''real'' user ID/ group ID from the ''effective'' user ID/group ID, using the setuid(2)/ setgi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Side-channel Attack
In computer security, a side-channel attack is any attack based on extra information that can be gathered because of the fundamental way a computer protocol or algorithm is implemented, rather than flaws in the design of the protocol or algorithm itself (e.g. flaws found in a cryptanalysis of a cryptographic algorithm) or minor, but potentially devastating, mistakes or oversights in the implementation. (Cryptanalysis also includes searching for side-channel attacks.) Timing information, power consumption, electromagnetic leaks, and sound are examples of extra information which could be exploited to facilitate side-channel attacks. Some side-channel attacks require technical knowledge of the internal operation of the system, although others such as differential power analysis are effective as black-box attacks. The rise of Web 2.0 applications and software-as-a-service has also significantly raised the possibility of side-channel attacks on the web, even when transmissions ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Copy-on-write
Copy-on-write (COW), sometimes referred to as implicit sharing or shadowing, is a resource-management technique used in computer programming to efficiently implement a "duplicate" or "copy" operation on modifiable resources. If a resource is duplicated but not modified, it is not necessary to create a new resource; the resource can be shared between the copy and the original. Modifications must still create a copy, hence the technique: the copy operation is deferred until the first write. By sharing resources in this way, it is possible to significantly reduce the resource consumption of unmodified copies, while adding a small overhead to resource-modifying operations. In virtual memory management Copy-on-write finds its main use in sharing the virtual memory of operating system processes, in the implementation of the fork system call. Typically, the process does not modify any memory and immediately executes a new process, replacing the address space entirely. Thus, it would be ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
File System Permissions
Most file systems include attributes of files and directories that control the ability of users to read, change, navigate, and execute the contents of the file system. In some cases, menu options or functions may be made visible or hidden depending on a user's permission level; this kind of user interface is referred to as permission-driven. Two types of permissions are widely available: traditional Unix file system permissions and access-control lists (ACLs) which are capable of more specific control. File system variations The original File Allocation Table file system has a per-file all-user read-only attribute. NTFS implemented in Microsoft Windows NT and its derivatives, use ACLs to provide a complex set of permissions. OpenVMS uses a permission scheme similar to that of Unix. There are four categories (system, owner, group, and world) and four types of access permissions (Read, Write, Execute and Delete). The categories are not mutually disjoint: World includes Group ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Zero Byte File
A zero-byte file or zero-length file is a computer file containing no data; that is, it has a length or size of zero bytes. Creation There are many ways that could manually create a zero-byte file, for example, saving empty content in a text editor, using utilities provided by operating systems, or programming to create it. On Unix-like systems, the shell command $ touch filename results in a zero-byte file . Zero-byte files may arise in cases where a program creates a file but aborts or is interrupted prematurely while writing to it. Because writes are cached in memory and only flushed to disk at a later time (page cache), a program that does not flush its writes to disk or terminate normally may result in a zero-byte file. When the zero-byte file is made, file system does not record the file's content on storage, but only updates its index table. Metadata Even a file describing an empty word processor document, an image file with zero-by-zero dimensions, or an audio file of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Page Size
A page, memory page, or virtual page is a fixed-length contiguous block of virtual memory, described by a single entry in the page table. It is the smallest unit of data for memory management in a virtual memory operating system. Similarly, a page frame is the smallest fixed-length contiguous block of physical memory into which memory pages are mapped by the operating system. A transfer of pages between main memory and an auxiliary store, such as a hard disk drive, is referred to as paging or swapping. Page size trade-off Page size is usually determined by the processor architecture. Traditionally, pages in a system had uniform size, such as 4,096 bytes. However, processor designs often allow two or more, sometimes simultaneous, page sizes due to its benefits. There are several points that can factor into choosing the best page size. Page table size A system with a smaller page size uses more pages, requiring a page table that occupies more space. For example, if a 232 vi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
