The Linux Virtual Memory System: The Linux Address Space
Explore the Linux virtual memory system, learning how the address space is divided between user and kernel parts. Understand kernel logical and virtual addresses and their roles in memory management, including physical memory mapping and allocation strategies.
We'll cover the following...
We’ll now discuss some of the more interesting aspects of the Linux VM system. Linux development has been driven forward by real engineers solving real problems encountered in production, and thus a large number of features have slowly been incorporated into what is now a fully functional, feature-filled virtual memory system.
While we won’t be able to discuss every aspect of Linux VM, we’ll touch on the most important ones, especially where it has gone beyond what is found in classic VM systems such as VAX/VMS. We’ll also try to highlight commonalities between Linux and older systems.
For this discussion, we’ll focus on Linux for Intel x86. While Linux can and does run on many different processor architectures, Linux on x86 is its most dominant and important deployment, and thus the focus of our attention.
Overview
Much like other modern operating systems, and also like VAX/VMS, ...