Virtual Memory

Virtual Memory
• Invented to solve problem that a program or collection

of ready programs are larger than physical memory
• Before virtual memory, overlays were used

– Programmer splits program into swap units called overlays
– Overlays must not refer to memory addresses outside of itself
except through special call to ask OS to specifically swap 2
swap units
– Unfriendly programming model
Virtual Memory
• Virtual memory – range of addressable locations

independent of size of physical memory
• Each process given a separate virtual address space

– Similar to having separate memory partitions for each process,
but virtual address space is not physically bounded
– Instead, virtual address space is limited by memory address

size
• Dependent on architecture
• 32-bit address was typical (232 = 4 billion)
• 64-bit is becoming more prevalent (264 = 16 quintillion)
Virtual Memory
• Virtual address space often divided into a few large

regions that are used differently
• Entire virtual address space is not addressable by a

process
• Off-limit regions used by OS to store per-proces data

structures
• Virtual memory is form of indirect addressing

Virtual Memory Mapping
• Memory management unit (MMU)

– Hardware to map virtual address to physical address
– Hardware essential for performance
– MMU resides in the CPU package
– MMU sends translated physical memory address onto
memory bus
• Steps in virtual address translation

1) CPU issues a program instruction
2) MMU translates virtual address to physical (main memory)
address (not physical location on disk!)
3) Physical memory page frame is accessed
Paging
• Physical memory is a sequence of page frames

• Process’ virtual address space is sequence of pages
• Pages and page frames are the same size
– Size is a power of 2
– Typically 4-64KB (typical size increases as main memory size
increases)
– Will large or small page sizes be more wasteful?
• Any page can be mapped to any page frame
• OS maintains mapping automatically (with assistance
from MMU hardware)
• Mapping is transparent to user/program
Page Tables
• MMU translates virtual address to physical address via

page table
• Size of page table = number of virtual pages
• One page table per process

– Located in kernel’s physical memory or process’ virtual
memory
– Table start and length in 2 hidden registers that are part of
process state information
• Example of using page table….

Page Table Entry
Disable Caching Ref. Dirty Protection Present/Absent Page Frame #
• Present/Absent bit – Is page loaded in main memory?
• Page Frame # - physical page frame where virtual page is
loaded
• Protection – read, write, executable
– If access is not allowed, produce segmentation fault
• “dirty bit” – has page been modified?
– If yes, then need to write back to disk when page is swapped out of
physical memory
• Referenced – set when page is accessed
– Helps OS decide whether or not to swap page out
• Disable caching – if set, do not use cached copy
– Cached copy may be invalid if page is mapped to I/O device and will
change often (memory-mapped I/O)
Page Tables: Design Issues
• Average waste due to internal fragmentation is ½ page

per process, so want small page size
• But, small page size many pages large
page table page tables (for each process)
will take up a lot of memory space
• Page sizes have grown a overall memory size has
grown – 4 to 64KB is common
• Often need to make 2 or more page table references
per instruction, so fast access is necessary!
• Using registers faster than using main memory
Page Tables: Design Issues
• 2 options
1) Store entire page table for process in registers
- No memory reference to access page table
- But, context switch between processes would be
expensive – why?
1) Store page table in memory and one register points
to start of page table for running process
- On context switch, load only 1 register value
- But, need one or more memory reference per instruction –
why?
• Neither methods rarely used. Instead, use hybrid
methods.
Managing Page Tables
• There is one page table entry (PTE) per possible

page in the address space, so huge number of
PTEs
– For example, 32-bit address space with 4KB pages and
32-bit PTEs
• Solutions to page size and fast access:
– Make all except part of OS’s page table pageable
(helps a little)
– Multi-level page tables
– Hashed page tables
– Inverted page tables
– TLB – translation look-aside buffer
Multi-level Page Tables
• Divide virtual address into 3 portions – high

page bits, low page bits, offset bits
• High page bits

– Index into a 1st-level page table
– Each entry points to 2nd-level page table which
contains conventional page table entries
– Need a complete 1st-level page table for entire virtual
address space
Multi-level Page Tables
• Avoid keeping all page tables in memory in 2 ways

– If 1st -level page entry indicates an invalid address, then do not even
allocate corresponding 2nd -level page tables
– Very common for process to have widely separated and dense text,
stack, and data areas – end up allocating just three 2nd -level page
tables, one for each “segment”. 3 areas do not have to be contiguous.
• Multi-level page tables can be extended to N levels as

address spaces get larger
• VAX and Pentium support 2-level page tables
• SPARC supports 3 levels
• Motorola 680X0 supports up to 4 levels
Translation Lookaside Buffer (TLB)
• Each virtual address reference requires 2 physical

memory references:
1) To page table to get mapping
2) To page frame itself
• Eliminate #1 by caching recent mappings in translation

lookaside buffer (TLB)
– Take advantage of fact that most programs reference small
number of pages often
– TLB is part of MMU
– Each TLB entry is a page table entry (has same elements as
PTE)
– TLB is special hardware (called associative memory) –
searches all PTE’s in TLB at once in parallel
– Approximately 64-256 PTE’s in TLB
• Translation and page fault handling happens in middle

of instruction
– Given virtual address, MMU compares it to all TLB entries in
parallel
• If present, no need to access memory to get page table entry
• Otherwise, load entry from page table
– Hardware must know how to restart any instruction that may
cause a page fault
• RISC machines (SPARC, MIPS, Alpha) do page

management in software. If virtual address is not in
the TLB, TLB fault occurs and is passed to OS
• 2 types of TLBs
1) Those whose entries include an address space ID
field
– Address space ID associates TLB entry with process
– No need to invalidate entries on context switch
2) Those whose entries do not include address
space ID
– TLB must be flushed on context switch
– When process is loaded, TLB is loaded from page table in
memory
Inverted Page Table
• Inverted page table has as many entries as physical
page frames – will max size be smaller than that of
page table?
• One single global inverted page table, rather than one
page table per process
• Each entry contains process ID and virtual page
number
• Given virtual address, must search in inverted page
table – cannot use virtual address as index as with
standard page table
• Solutions:
– Maintain inverted page table in associative memory hardware
whose entries are search in parallel
– Use hash table to hash the virtual page address – how?
Two Different Architectures
• Typical page table architecture
– Information is kept in combination of page tables and map of
allocated virtual address space region to backing store –
backing store is swap space on disk where pages are
swapped in & out
– TLB is a cache
– PTE present/absent bit must be reset when page is replaced
(page frame field is considered garbage)
• TLB-only architecture (RISC machines)

– TLB is not cache – it is definitive record of where pages are in
memory
– Page tables indicate disk location
– Page table remains unchanged when page is replaced
– Page table should be called “allocated-region-to-backing-
store” data structure
Summary of Options
• Page table – the standard
• Solutions to minimizing size of page tables:
– Multi-level page table
– Inverted page table
– Hashed page table
• Solution to faster access:
– TLB reduces number of memory references to get page table
entry
• Inverted page table – HP Spectrum, UltraSPARC, Power
PC
• Only TLB in hardware, leave all else to OS – MIPS,
Alpha, HP Precision

Virtual Memory

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Virtual Memory

• Invented to solve problem that a program or collection

• Before virtual memory, overlays were used

• Virtual memory – range of addressable locations

• Each process given a separate virtual address space

– Instead, virtual address space is limited by memory address

• Virtual address space often divided into a few large

• Entire virtual address space is not addressable by a

• Off-limit regions used by OS to store per-proces data

• Virtual memory is form of indirect addressing

• Memory management unit (MMU)

• Steps in virtual address translation

• Physical memory is a sequence of page frames

• MMU translates virtual address to physical address via

• Size of page table = number of virtual pages

• One page table per process

• Example of using page table….

• Average waste due to internal fragmentation is ½ page

• There is one page table entry (PTE) per possible

• Divide virtual address into 3 portions – high

• High page bits

• Avoid keeping all page tables in memory in 2 ways

• Multi-level page tables can be extended to N levels as

• Each virtual address reference requires 2 physical

• Eliminate #1 by caching recent mappings in translation

• Translation and page fault handling happens in middle

• RISC machines (SPARC, MIPS, Alpha) do page

• TLB-only architecture (RISC machines)

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