Virtual-to-Physical Page Tables

While it is true that virtual-to-physical translation takes place in the processor hardware, the table that supports it resides in the kernel's memory space, and if the kernel wishes to move processes in and out of play, it must adjust entries in this table accordingly. Figure 6-3 demonstrates how the hardware's page directory, or pdir, is also known to the kernel as the hashtable.

Figure 6-3. How the Kernel Views the pdir

The processor populates the hashtable (htbl/pdir) with page data entries (pde), which contain a variety of status bits, the current virtual address, and the current physical address of a page ...

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