Memory Protection - Memory Protection in Different Operating Systems

Memory Protection in Different Operating Systems

Different operating systems use different forms of memory protection or separation. True memory separation was not used in home computer operating systems until OS/2 was released in 1987. On prior systems, such lack of protection was even used as a form of interprocess communication, by sending a pointer between processes. It is possible for processes to access System Memory in the Windows 9x family of Operating Systems.

Some operating systems that do implement memory protection include:

  • Microsoft Windows family from Windows NT 3.1
  • OS/2
  • OS-9, as an optional module
  • Unix-like systems, including Solaris, Linux, BSD, Mac OS X and GNU Hurd
  • Plan9 and Inferno, created at Bell Labs as Unix successors

On Unix-like systems, the mprotect system call is used to control memory protection.

Read more about this topic:  Memory Protection

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