Editing Virtual address space (section)

{{Short description|Set of ranges of virtual addresses}}
{{redirect2|Virtual address|virtual addressing}}
{{one source|date=August 2012}}
[[Image:Virtual address space and physical address space relationship.svg|thumb|300px]]
In [[computing]], a '''virtual address space''' ('''VAS''') or '''[[address space]]''' is the set of ranges of virtual addresses that an [[operating system]] makes available to a process.<ref>{{cite web|website=IBM|title=What is an address space?|url=https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/zos-basic-skills?topic=storage-what-is-address-space|access-date=May 5, 2024}}</ref> The range of virtual addresses usually starts at a low address and can extend to the highest address allowed by the computer's [[Instruction set|instruction set architecture]] and supported by the [[operating system]]'s pointer size implementation, which can be 4 [[bytes]] for [[32-bit]] or 8 [[bytes]] for [[64-bit]] OS versions.  This provides several benefits, one of which is security through [[process isolation]] assuming each process is given a separate [[address space]].