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by gruez 1955 days ago
>I guess this is not the most up-to-date document?

it's also not correct. It doesn't have all 4GB "all to itself", because a portion of that (usually 1 or 2 GB) is mapped to the kernel.

1 comments

"each process has 4 gigabytes of virtual address space all to itself"

A process does indeed have all 4GB of VIRTUAL adress space to itself. unless I'm misunderstanding you.

Yes, VIRTUAL memory. Most operating systems (Windows, Linux) leave 2 or 3 GB for the user process and reserve the of the address space for themselves.

That way userspace-to-kernel switch does not require changing active page table (and also avoids switcharoo each time kernel needs to access userspace memory).