The Shared Virtual Address Space Model
Banu Özden, Avi Silberschatz · 1992
The availability of 64-bit processors enables the use of the shared address space (SAS) model where all processes execute in the same address space. This is in contrast to most existing operating systems that use the private address space (PAS) model where each process views the entire space as dedicated to itself. The PAS model can only support a restricted number of computational paradigms, whereas the SAS model can provide general, efficient, flexible and simple mechanisms to support various computational paradigms. Furthermore, the use of the SAS model results in increased system performance. The SAS paradigm can be classified into various models, which differ in the way the address space and protection domain are managed. The different models yield different computation domains and different performances. In this paper, we define a new SAS model -- the shared virtual address space (SVAS) model, and argue that it is preferable over other existing SAS models. We then identify the necessary hardware support for the SVAS model.