Which of the following tasks is/are the responsibility/responsibilities of the memory management unit (MMU) in a system with paging-based memory management? A) Allocate a new page table for a newly created process B) Translate a virtual address to a physical address using the page table C) Raise a trap when a virtual address is not found in the page table D) Raise a trap when a process tries to write to a page marked with read-only permission in the page table

Official answer: B) Translate a virtual address to a physical address using the page table; C) Raise a trap when a virtual address is not found in the page table; D) Raise a trap when a process tries to write to a page marked with read-only permission in the page table. Explanation: The Memory Management Unit (MMU) is a hardware component responsible for handling memory access operations requested by the CPU: - Option (A) is incorrect: Allocating and initializing data structures like page tables for newly created processes is a software task performed by the Operating System (kernel), not the MMU hardware. - Option (B) is correct: The primary hardware function of the MMU is runtime address translation—translating virtual (logical) addresses generated by the CPU into physical addresses in main memory using the page table and TLB. - Option (C) is correct: When the valid/present bit for a virtual page in the page table is zero (or the page entry is missing/not present in memory), the MMU raises a page fault trap/exception to invoke the operating system's page fault handler. - Option (D) is correct: The MMU checks access rights on each memory access. If a process attempts to execute an unauthorized operation (such as writing to a read-only page), the MMU raises a protection fault/trap.

A) Allocate a new page table for a newly created process

Memory Management and Virtual Memory

GATE CSE 2024 Set 2 · Q24

MSQ1 markMedium

Time00:00

Which of the following tasks is/are the responsibility/responsibilities of the memory management unit (MMU) in a system with paging-based memory management?

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Official answer: B) Translate a virtual address to a physical address using the page table; C) Raise a trap when a virtual address is not found in the page table; D) Raise a trap when a process tries to write to a page marked with read-only permission in the page table

Memory Management and Virtual Memory

The Memory Management Unit (MMU) is a hardware component responsible for handling memory access operations requested by the CPU:

Option (A) is incorrect: Allocating and initializing data structures like page tables for newly created processes is a software task performed by the Operating System (kernel), not the MMU hardware.
Option (B) is correct: The primary hardware function of the MMU is runtime address translation—translating virtual (logical) addresses generated by the CPU into physical addresses in main memory using the page table and TLB.
Option (C) is correct: When the valid/present bit for a virtual page in the page table is zero (or the page entry is missing/not present in memory), the MMU raises a page fault trap/exception to invoke the operating system's page fault handler.
Option (D) is correct: The MMU checks access rights on each memory access. If a process attempts to execute an unauthorized operation (such as writing to a read-only page), the MMU raises a protection fault/trap.

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This Memory Management and Virtual Memory previous year question is Q24 of the GATE CSE 2024 Set 2 paper. Find more GATE CSE PYQs on Memory Management and Virtual Memory in Operating Systems, or browse all GATE CSE PYQs.

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Memory Management and Virtual Memory in GATE CSE

Memory Management and Virtual Memory has 32 GATE CSE PYQs across 22 papers from 2011 to 2026. 2 of them are 1-mark MSQs like this one, and GATE CSE 2024 Set 2 has 2.

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Independent practice explanation verified by the GateAI team. GATE is conducted by the IITs; question text follows the official paper.