Memory Management

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In a virtual memory system all of these addresses are virtual addresses and not physical addresses. These virtual addresses are converted into physical addresses by the processor based on information held in a set of tables maintained by the operating system.

To make this translation easier, virtual and physical memory are divided into handy sized chunks called pages. These pages are all the same size, they need not be but if they were not, the system would be very hard to administer. Linux on Alpha AXP systems uses 8 Kbyte pages and on Intel x86 systems it uses 4 Kbyte pages. Each of these pages is given a unique number; the page frame number (PFN).