Linux Kernel Development, Third Edition

15. The Process Address Space

Chapter 12, “Memory Management,” looked at how the kernel manages physical memory. In addition to managing its own memory, the kernel also has to manage the memory of user-space processes. This memory is called the process address space, which is the representation of memory given to each user-space process on the system. Linux is a virtual memory operating system, and thus the resource of memory is virtualized among the processes on the system. An individual process’s view of memory is as if it alone has full access to the system’s physical memory. More important, the address space of even a single process can be much larger than physical memory. This chapter discusses how the kernel manages the process address ...