A sectored virtual memory management system and translation look-aside buffer (TLB) for the same

摘要

A memory management system is described which divides each virtual page into two or more sectors. Each of these sectors can then be individually loaded into memory in order to reduce bandwidth consumed loading virtual pages into a physical memory. A TLB (10) for this system includes a plurality of TLB entries (12). Each TLB entry includes a variable physical page number (PPN FIELD) (18) and a variable length presence field (20). Each bit of the presence field indicates whether a corresponding sector is present in physical memory. The TLB entry (12) also includes a page size field (22), which indicates the size of the corresponding virtual page. This size field also indirectly controls the number of sectors within that page and, thus, the number of presence bits required. As the page size grows the number of bits required to store the physical page number reduces. These unused bits are then consumed by additional presence bits so that all the bits in the TLB entry are used for all page sizes and number of sectors. <IMAGE>