Virtual memory layout

Virtual memory in Pintos is divided into two regions: user virtual memory and kernel virtual memory. User virtual memory ranges from virtual address 0 up to PHYS_BASE, which is defined in threads/vaddr.h and defaults to 0xc0000000 (3 GB). Kernel virtual memory occupies the rest of the virtual address space, from PHYS_BASE up to 4 GB.

User virtual memory is per-process. When the kernel switches from one process to another, it also switches user virtual address spaces by changing the processor’s page directory base register (see pagedir_activate() in userprog/pagedir.c). struct thread contains a pointer to a process’s page table.

Kernel virtual memory is global. It is always mapped the same way, regardless of what user process or kernel thread is running. In Pintos, kernel virtual memory is mapped one-to-one to physical memory, starting at PHYS_BASE. That is, virtual address PHYS_BASE accesses physical address 0, virtual address PHYS_BASE + 0x1234 accesses physical address 0x1234, and so on up to the size of the machine’s physical memory.

A user program can only access its own user virtual memory. An attempt to access kernel virtual memory causes a page fault, handled by page_fault() in userprog/exception.c, and the process will be terminated. Kernel threads can access both kernel virtual memory and, if a user process is running, the user virtual memory of the running process. However, even in the kernel, an attempt to access memory at an unmapped user virtual address will cause a page fault.

Typical memory layout

Conceptually, each process is free to lay out its own user virtual memory however it chooses. In practice, user virtual memory is laid out like this:

 PHYS_BASE +----------------------------------+
           |            user stack            |
           |                |                 |
           |                |                 |
           |                V                 |
           |           grows downward         |
           |                                  |
           |                                  |
           |                                  |
           |                                  |
           |           grows upward           |
           |                ^                 |
           |                |                 |
           |                |                 |
           +----------------------------------+
           | uninitialized data segment (BSS) |
           +----------------------------------+
           |     initialized data segment     |
           +----------------------------------+
           |           code segment           |
0x08048000 +----------------------------------+
           |                                  |
           |                                  |
           |                                  |
           |                                  |
           |                                  |
         0 +----------------------------------+