Paging and Memory Management Unit (MMU)
Understand how the x86 MMU translates virtual addresses to physical addresses using page tables and directories.
What is Paging?
Welcome! Today we'll explore Paging, a crucial memory management technique in x86 systems. It's how your computer handles memory safely and efficiently.
Paging allows programs to think they have a huge, continuous block of memory, even if the physical RAM is fragmented or smaller than what the program needs.
Virtual vs. Physical Address
When a program runs, it uses virtual addresses. These are logical addresses that the program 'sees' and uses to refer to data and instructions.
However, the CPU and actual RAM hardware use physical addresses. Paging is the system that translates virtual addresses into physical addresses.
All lessons in this course
- Paging and Memory Management Unit (MMU)
- Protection Rings and Privileges
- Hypervisors and Virtualization Basics
- Segmentation and the Global Descriptor Table (GDT)