5.5.2.1.2Paging

The paging unit translates linear addresses into physical addresses. It checks the requested access type against the access rights of the linear address. Linear addresses are grouped in fixed-length intervals called pages. To allow the kernel to specify the physical address and access rights of a page instead of addresses and access rights of all the linear addresses in the page, continuous linear addresses within a page are mapped to continuous physical addresses.

Figure 5-29: Contiguous linear addresses map to contiguous physical addresses

The paging unit sees all RAM as partitioned into fixed-length page frames. A page frame is a container for a page. A page is a block of data that can be stored in a page frame in memory or on disk. Data structures that map linear addresses to physical addresses are called page tables. Page tables are stored in memory and are initialized by the kernel when the system is started.

The System x supports two types of paging: regular paging and extended paging. The regular paging unit handles 4 KB pages, and the extended paging unit handles 4 MB pages. Extended paging is enabled by setting the Page Size flag of a Page Directory Entry.

In regular paging, 32 bits of linear address are divided into three fields:

Directory: The most significant 10 bits represents directory.

Table: The intermediate 10 bits represents table.

Offset: The least significant 12 bits represents offset.

88

Page 100
Image 100
IBM 10 SP1 EAL4 manual Paging