Byte Lab

What is memory? Part 4: Stack allocations, dynamic allocations, and the heap?

Welcome back to the "What is memory?" blog series. In our last post, we covered a lot of ground on some pretty low-level, complex topics. Let's do a quick review of what was discussed: 1. We learned that a program is executed by something called David Vernet Oct 2, 2022 • 22 min read

What is memory? Part 3: Registers, stacks, and threads?

In the last post, we learned that a process is composed of a series of segments, which are loaded into its address space by a dynamic linker/loader. Once a process has been loaded and is ready to run, its address space looks something like this: If you’ll recall David Vernet Sep 24, 2022 • 19 min read

What is memory? (part 2): The anatomy of a process?

In our last post, we had some fun dunking on my poor, hapless TA. We asked and answered the question, “what is null”, and in answering that question, learned some important lessons about computer systems: 1. Everything is just data and context. When hardware and software components are interacting with David Vernet Apr 16, 2022 • 16 min read

What is memory? (part 1): Virtual memory and address spaces?

I remember when I was an undergraduate taking my first computer science course.