Kernel space memory layout
Kernel memory is managed in a fairly straightforward way. It is not demand-paged, meaning that, for every allocation using kmalloc() or similar function, there is real physical memory. Kernel memory is never discarded or paged out.
Some architectures show a summary of the memory mapping at boot time in the kernel log messages. This trace is taken from a 32-bit ARM device (a BeagleBone Black):
Memory: 511MB = 511MB total Memory: 505980k/505980k available, 18308k reserved, 0K highmem Virtual kernel memory layout: vector : 0xffff0000 - 0xffff1000 ( 4 kB) fixmap : 0xfff00000 - 0xfffe0000 ( 896 kB) vmalloc : 0xe0800000 - 0xff000000 ( 488 MB) lowmem : 0xc0000000 - 0xe0000000 ( 512 MB) pkmap : 0xbfe00000 - 0xc0000000 ( 2 MB) ...
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