Efficient translation lookaside buffer miss processing in computer systems with a large range of page sizes
US6715057B1 · kind B1 · utility
Assignee
Inventors
Key dates
| Filing date | Aug 31, 2000 |
| Grant date | Mar 30, 2004 |
| Priority date | — |
| Expiry date | May 22, 2021 |
Classification
- Technology area (CPC G)Physics
- CPC primaryG06F2212/652
- WIPO fieldComputer technology
- WIPO sectorElectrical engineering
Abstract
A system and method is disclosed to efficiently translate virtual-to-physical addresses of large size pages of data by eliminating one level of a multilevel page table. A computer system containing a processor includes a translation lookaside buffer (“TLB”) in the processor. The processor is connected to a system memory that contains a page table with multiple levels. The page table translates the virtual address of a page of data stored in system memory into the corresponding physical address of the page of data. If the size of the page is above a certain threshold value, then translation of the page using the multilevel page table occurs by eliminating one or more levels of the page table. The threshold value preferably is 512 Megabytes. The multilevel page table is only used for translation of the virtual address of the page of data stored in system memory into the corresponding physical address of the page of data if a lookup of the TLB for the virtual address of the page of data results in a miss. The TLB also contains entries from the final level of the page table (i.e., physical addresses of pages of data) corresponding to a subfield of bits from corresponding vi…
Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.