Memory protection
<memory management> A system to prevent one
process corrupting the memory (or other resources) of any other, including the
operating system.
Memory protection usually relies on a combination of hardware (a
memory management unit) and software to allocate memory to processes and handle exceptions.
The effectiveness of memory protection varies from one operating system to another.
In most versions of
Unix it is almost impossible to corrupt another process' memory, except in some archaic implementations and Lunix (not
Linux!). Under
Microsoft Windows (version?
hardware?) any 16 bit application(?) can circumvent the memory protection, often leading to one or more
GPFs.
Currently (April 1996) neither
Microsoft Windows 3.1,
Windows 95, nor
Mac OS offer memory protection.
Windows NT has it, and Mac OS System 8 will offer a form of memory protection.
[MS DOS
EMM386 relevant?]
