Translating virtual memory addresses to physical memory addresses

Abstract

In one embodiment, a method includes accessing a virtual address from a request to access a memory of the computing device, where virtual addresses are translated to physical addresses of physical memory in the computing device using an N-level page table, and the lowest level of the page table contains page-table entries specifying the physical address of a frame of physical memory. The method includes searching, using the virtual address, a translation lookaside buffer (TLB) including a plurality of TLB entries, each TLB entry including (1) a tag identifying a virtual address associated with the entry and (2) a page-table entry specifying the physical address of a lower-level page table or of a frame of physical memory associated with the virtual address identified in the tag; and iteratively performing, until the virtual address is translated to a physical address, an address-translation procedure that depends on the cached TLB entries.