METHOD AND APPARATUS FPR MAPPING PAGE TABLE TREES INTO VIRTUAL ADDRESS SPACE FOR ADDRESS TRANSLATION

Techniques used in a virtual memory system for mapping the page table for a process onto the process's virtual address space. The mappings make it possible for the virtual memory manager to compute addresses for the page table in the same fashion, regardless of the page table configuration required by the hardware. The techniques include linear mapping of a process's page table entries onto a portion of its virtual address space and self-recursive mapping of page trees onto the virtual address space. The techniques make porting an operating system to various kinds of hardware easier, reduce the size of the portion of virtual memory which must be reserved for the page table, and speed up references to the page table by the virtual memory manager. Further refinements permit creation of nodes of the mapped page table on demand and access of a second process's page table from a first process's page table.