13. TLBs and Page Fault Handling
The chapter explores the challenges of managing page tables in computer systems, particularly regarding address translation speed and memory access efficiency. It discusses the implementation of page tables in hardware and the use of Translation Lookaside Buffers (TLBs) as a solution to minimize costly memory accesses. Furthermore, the chapter details the caching mechanism of TLBs, the handling of page faults, and the performance implications of these strategies on system operations.
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What we have learnt
- Page tables can be large, necessitating efficient management strategies to speed up address translations.
- Translation Lookaside Buffers (TLBs) are crucial for fast memory access by caching recently used page table entries.
- Efficient handling of page faults is essential in maintaining system performance, requiring coordination with the operating system.
Key Concepts
- -- Page Table
- A data structure used to map virtual addresses to physical addresses in memory.
- -- Translation Lookaside Buffer (TLB)
- A cache that stores page table entries for quick access and minimizes the need to access the main memory.
- -- Page Fault
- An event that occurs when a program tries to access a page that is not currently in physical memory, requiring the page to be loaded from secondary storage.
- -- Locality of Reference
- The principle stating that memory access patterns tend to cluster, meaning that recently accessed data is likely to be accessed again soon.
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