MEMORY MANAGEMENT

Memory management is provided within a data processing system 2 which includes a memory protection unit 8 and defines memory regions within the memory address space which extend between base addresses and limit addresses and have respective attributes associated therewith. When a hit occurs within a memory region which is a valid hit, then block data is generated comprising a mask value and a TAG value (derived from the original query address) which may then be used to identify subsequent hits within at least a portion of that region using a bitwise AND. In another embodiment a micro-translation lookaside buffer is reused by the memory protection unit to store page data identifying pages which fall validly within memory regions and may be used to return attribute data for those pages upon subsequent accesses rather than performing the comparison with the base address and the limit addresses.