virtual address

virtual address

[′vər·chə·wəl ′ad‚res]

(computer science)

A symbol that can be used as a valid address part but does not necessarily designate an actual location.

McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Scientific & Technical Terms, 6E, Copyright © 2003 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

virtual address

(architecture)

A memory location accessed by an application program in a system with virtual memory such that intervening hardware and/or software maps the virtual address to real (physical) memory. During the course of execution of an application, the same virtual address may be mapped to many different physical addresses as data and programs are paged out and paged in to other locations.

virtual address

(2)

In IBM's VM operating system, Virtual Device Location.

This article is provided by FOLDOC - Free Online Dictionary of Computing (foldoc.org)

virtual address

A temporary address in storage. Every computer has a virtual memory system that allows a running program to be split up into "pages." When RAM is needed for another program, one or more pages are temporarily copied to HDD or SSD storage until required again. When the instructions in the stored page are needed for execution, the page is copied back into RAM, and a page in that program or another program is temporarily swapped out. Contrast with real address. See virtual memory.

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