Which one of the following statements is FALSE?

Let us analyze each statement:

• Statement (A) is TRUE: A Translation Lookaside Buffer (TLB) is an associative cache that performs a parallel search across all its valid entries matching the virtual page number.

• Statement (B) is TRUE: A TLB entry is only populated if the corresponding page is present in physical main memory. Therefore, if there is a TLB hit, the page is guaranteed to reside in main memory, and a cache miss will successfully retrieve the word from main memory.

• Statement (C) is FALSE: In an inverted page table, entries are indexed by physical frame numbers rather than virtual page numbers. Finding the frame for a given virtual page number requires searching the table (often using a hash anchor table with chained collision resolution). Because different virtual addresses may encounter chains of different lengths or different search depths, the access time is not always the same for all virtual addresses.

• Statement (D) is TRUE: In hashed page tables, hash collisions are resolved using linked lists/chaining. The entry found first in the chain takes fewer memory accesses than an entry further down the chain, so their access times will differ.

Therefore, the false statement is (C).