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Line 1: [[image:Paging_Structure.gif\|right\|thumb\|600x350px\|x86 Paging Structure]] ==Overview== 32 -bit x86 processors support a 4GiB virtual address space and current 64 bit processors support a 256TiB virtual address space (with a theoretical maximum of 16EiB). Paging is a system which allows each process to see the full virtual address space, without actually requiring the full amount of physical RAM to be physically installed. In fact, current implementations of x86-64 has a current physical RAM limit of 1TiB and a theoretical limit of 4PiB of physical RAM. In addition to this, paging introduces the benefit of page-level protection. In this system, user-level processes can only see and modify data which is paged in to their own address space, providing hardware isolation. System pages are also protected from user processes. On the x86-64 architecture, page-level protection now completely supercedes [[Segmentation]] as the memory protection mechanism. On the IA32 architecture, both paging and segmentation exist, but segmentation is now considered 'legacy'.

Paging: Difference between revisions

Paging (view source)