Mastering Assembly Programming

Protected mode - paging

Paging is a more convenient memory management scheme introduced in 80386 and has been a bit enhanced since then. The idea behind paging is memory virtualization--this is the mechanism that makes it possible for different processes to have the same memory layout. In fact, the addresses we use in pointers (if we are writing in C, C++, or any other high-level language that compiles into native code) are virtual and do not correspond to physical addresses. The translation of a virtual address into a physical address is implemented in hardware and is performed by the CPU (however, some operating system interventions are possible).

By default, a 32-bit CPU uses a two-level translation scheme for the derivation of a physical ...