Virtual Memory Flashcards
1
Q
Translation Lookaside Buffer
A
Basically a cache for virtual-to-physical address translations. This lets us employ hierarchical page tables without either storing them in memory (requiring a memory access for each level) or storing in the cache itself.
Storing in the cache is not ideal because the cache is relatively large compared to the TLB, so having a separate TLB makes the TLB very very fast. Also, the cache would have to store all the individual entries of the different levels of the page tables, whereas the TLB can directly store the final translation, making it even faster.
