Memory Page

Abstract

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• Depends on the OS & hardware architecture. Usually each page share a fixed size of 4kb(check with getconf PAGESIZE)
• The 4kb memory page is one contiguous space in the Main Memory

Memory Page Size

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• We need to find a fine balance overhead and flexibility when deciding the size of the Memory Page
• With more overhead, it comes with more flexibility, vice versa
• When we want more flexibility, we should reduce the memory page size, so we can more freely to manipulate the Main Memory with Virtual Memory. But that means we more space for Page Table to manage mapping

Caution

If the memory page size is too big, this may leads to a lot of wasted memory space. For example, the memory page size is 10MB, and my program needs 10.00001MB. The Kernel will issue 2 memory page that are 10MB each, this means 9.99999MB is wasted. Imagine I have a lot of programs with 10.00001MB in my computer, that means we waste almost half of the available main memory!

Terminologies

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Page Number

• A number to identify a Memory Page