Abstract

Virtual memory is a feature of most operating systems. It presents a level of indirection between the addresses that an application views, and the physical memory addresses used by the hardware. The benefits of virtual memory include: security, reliability, application transparent relocation of physical memory, and cache partitioning. The page table is a critical component of a paged virtual memory system. The page table contains the set of translations that map virtual addresses to physical addresses. The implementation of a page-table structure affects the cost of virtual memory to applications. This thesis explores the cost of various page-table structures to applications in a 64-bit microkernel environment. The primary goal of the thesis is to identify the page-table structures most suited to a microkernel environment, i.e. an environment that is expected to efficiently support a diverse range of applications and operating systems, including single-address-space operating systems ...

Citations