What is thrashing in a virtual memory system?

Options

  • A. A condition in which excessive page faults cause the system to spend most of its time swapping pages
  • B. A condition in which CPU utilization always reaches 100 percent
  • C. A method of increasing physical memory without hardware
  • D. More than one of the above
  • E. None of the above

Correct Answer (Detailed Explanation is Below)

A. A condition in which excessive page faults cause the system to spend most of its time swapping pages

Detailed Explanation

Explanation: Thrashing occurs when a system experiences an extremely high rate of page faults. The operating system spends most of its time transferring pages between physical memory and secondary storage instead of executing useful processes.