Intel x86 Assembly Language & Microarchitecture Paging - Virtual Addressing and Memory Physical Address Extension (PAE)
Example
Introduction
As memory prices dropped, Intel-based PCs were able to have more and more RAM affordably, alleviating many users' problems with running many of the ever-larger applications that were being produced simultaneously. While virtual memory allowed memory to be virtually "created" - swapping existing "old" Page contents to the hard disk to allow "new" data to be stored - this slowed down the running of the programs as Page "thrashing" kept continually swapping data on and off the hard disk.
More RAM
What was needed was the ability to access more physical RAM - but it was already a 32-bit address bus, so any increase would require larger address registers. Or would it? When developing the Pentium Pro (and even the Pentium M), as a stop-gap until 64-bit processors could be produced, to add more Physical Address bits (allowing more Physical memory) without changing the number of register bits. This could be achieved since Virtual Addresses were mapped to Physical Addresses anyway - all that needed to change was the mapping system.
Design
The existing system could access a maximum of 32 bits of Physical Addresses. Increasing this required a complete change of the Page Entry structure, from 32 to 64 bits. It was decided to keep the minimum granularity at 4K Pages, so the 64-bit Entry would have 52 bits of Address and 12 bits of Control (like the previous Entry had 20 bits of Address and 12 bits of Control).
Having a 64-bit Entry, but a Page size of (still) 4K, meant that there would only be 512 Entries per Page Table or Directory, instead of the previous 1,024. That meant that the 32-bit Virtual Address would be divided differently than before:
+-----+-----------+------------+------------+
| DPI | Dir Index | Page Index | Byte Index |
+-----+-----------+------------+------------+
3 3 2 2 2 1 1 0 Bit
1 0 9 1 0 2 1 0 number
DPI = 2-bit index into Directory Pointer Table
Dir Index = 9-bit index into Directory
Page Index = 9-bit index into Page Table
Byte Index = 12-bit index into Page (as before)
Chopping one bit from both the Directory Index and Page Index gave two bits for a third tier of mapping: they called this the Page Directory Pointer Table (PDPT), a table of exactly four 64-bit Entries that addressed four Directories instead of the previous one. The PDBR (CR3) now pointed to the PDPT instead - which, since CR3 was only 32 bits, needed to be stored in the first 4 GB of RAM for accessibility. Note that since the low bits of CR3 are used for Control, the PDPT has to start on a 32-byte boundary.
Page Size Extension (PSE)
And, since the previous 4MB Pages were such a good idea, they wanted to be able to support large Pages again. This time though, removing the last layer of the tier system didn't produce 10+12 bit 4MB Pages, but 9+12 bit 2MB Pages instead.
