What is thrashing in an operating system?
a) A condition where excessive paging activity severely degrades system performance
b) A technique for managing file system errors
c) A method for optimizing CPU scheduling
d) A process for recovering memory leaks
Answer:
a) A condition where excessive paging activity severely degrades system performance
Explanation:
Thrashing occurs when the operating system spends a significant amount of time swapping pages between memory and disk due to insufficient physical memory. This leads to a situation where system performance degrades because more time is spent on paging than executing processes.
Thrashing can occur when the system is overloaded with too many processes, and the working set of these processes exceeds the available physical memory. The system continually swaps pages in and out of memory, slowing down overall performance.
To prevent thrashing, the operating system can use techniques such as reducing the degree of multiprogramming, increasing physical memory, or using more efficient paging algorithms.