which is transparent to the programmer, eliminates external fragmentation, provides efficient use of main memory, and has pieces of fixed, equal size.

The memory management scheme that is transparent to the programmer, eliminates external fragmentation, provides efficient use of main memory, and has pieces of fixed, equal size is Paging.

Here's a step-by-step explanation:

1. Paging is a memory management scheme that permits the physical address space of a process to be noncontiguous.

2. It avoids the considerable problem of fitting memory chunks of varying sizes onto the backing store; most memory management schemes used before the introduction of paging suffered from this problem, known as fragmentation.

3. The scheme is transparent to the programmer, i.e., the programmer is not aware of the memory division. The operating system handles all the operations related to paging.

4. In paging, the memory is divided into fixed-size pages. These pages are also of fixed size in the backing store.

5. When a process is to be executed, its pages are loaded into any available memory frames from their source (like a disk).

6. This scheme reduces external fragmentation, as any free frame can be allocated to a page.

7. Paging also allows efficient use of memory. If a page is not in use, it can be swapped out to the backing store, freeing up the frame for other pages.

8. The equal size of pages and frames simplifies the management of memory by the operating system.