In memory management, which technique involves dividing memory into fixed sized blocks and mapping logical pages to these blocks?

Introduction / Context:
Operating systems use various memory management techniques to map logical addresses used by programs to physical addresses in main memory. One of the most common techniques is paging, which divides both virtual and physical address spaces into fixed sized blocks. This question tests whether you can identify paging as the technique that uses fixed size blocks.

Given Data / Assumptions:

• Logical memory is divided into pages of equal size.
• Physical memory is divided into frames of the same fixed size.
• A page table maps pages to frames.

Concept / Approach:
Paging works by splitting the virtual address space of a process into fixed size units called pages. Physical memory is divided into frames that are exactly the same size as pages. When a process is loaded or when a page fault occurs, the operating system allocates available frames and maps pages to frames via page tables. This eliminates external fragmentation because any free frame can hold any page. Programs see a continuous virtual address space even though their pages may be scattered across physical memory. The other terms given in the options do not refer to standard memory management techniques.

Step-by-Step Solution:
Step 1: Recall that paging is explicitly defined as dividing memory into fixed sized blocks.Step 2: Note that segmentation, in contrast, divides memory into variable sized segments based on logical program structure.Step 3: Recognize that the terms scaling, whiping, and tracking are not names of standard memory management techniques.Step 4: Choose paging as the technique that matches the description in the question.

Verification / Alternative check:
Textbooks on operating systems describe paging in detail and often show diagrams of logical pages mapped to physical frames. They emphasize that all pages and frames are of equal size, which is typically a power of two such as 4 kilobytes. Practical systems like Linux and Windows use paging as the core mechanism for virtual memory. This confirms that paging is the correct term for fixed size block based memory management.

Why Other Options Are Wrong:
Option B: Scaling is a general term in performance tuning and mathematics but is not the name of a memory management technique based on fixed size blocks.Option C: Whiping is not a recognized technical term in this context and appears to be a distractor.Option D: Tracking may refer to monitoring resources, but it is not the standard term for a memory management method based on fixed sized blocks.

Common Pitfalls:
Students sometimes confuse paging with segmentation or with simple contiguous allocation. Remember that fixed size pages and frames are the hallmark of paging, whereas segmentation uses variable sizes based on logical units such as functions or data structures. Another pitfall is to think that paging necessarily implies swapping entire processes; in reality, modern systems page individual portions of processes on demand.

Final Answer:
The correct answer is Paging.