33 results about "Page fault" patented technology

A page fault (sometimes called #PF, PF or hard fault) is a type of exception raised by computer hardware when a running program accesses a memory page that is not currently mapped by the memory management unit (MMU) into the virtual address space of a process. Logically, the page may be accessible to the process, but requires a mapping to be added to the process page tables, and may additionally require the actual page contents to be loaded from a backing store such as a disk. The processor's MMU detects the page fault, while the exception handling software that handles page faults is generally a part of the operating system kernel. When handling a page fault, the operating system generally tries to make the required page accessible at the location in physical memory, or terminates the program in case of an illegal memory access.