Your Computer Memory is a Lie

What happened

When you first learn to program, memory seems pretty straightforward. You have a bunch of bytes, each with an address.

If you want to read or write something, you specify the address, and the computer goes to that place and does your bidding. Sure, some addresses might be reserved for hardware or the operating system, but the general idea is simple: memory is a big array of bytes.

On a modern computer, however, it is almost entirely a lie. The address you use probably isn’t a physical address.