👉 Copy computing, also known as copy-on-write (COW) or shared memory copying, is a memory management technique used in computing to efficiently handle data duplication and sharing among processes. In this model, when a process needs to access a piece of memory that it doesn't own, the operating system creates a copy of that memory region only when the process actually writes to it. This approach significantly reduces memory usage and improves performance, as processes don't need to duplicate their data unnecessarily. Instead, they share the original memory space until a write operation occurs, at which point only the modified copy is updated, and the rest of the process continues using the original data. This technique is widely employed in operating systems, file systems, and virtual memory implementations to optimize resource utilization and enhance system efficiency.
