Virtual memory from first principles: page tables, TLBs, and Linux internals
abhi9u · x · 2026-09-30
Abhinav Upadhyay published a book-length deep dive on virtual memory (with a typeset 60-page PDF/EPUB), covering how it works and how it affects performance in data-intensive systems.
Key topics:
- Why virtual memory exists: process isolation, memory protection, and the illusion of abundant memory
- Lazy allocation via demand paging; copy-on-write for shared memory and fast fork
- mmap file I/O that skips the page-cache-to-user-buffer copy
- Page reclaim, swap, and the page cache
- Performance effects of access patterns, huge pages, TLB shootdowns, and NUMA topology
Aimed at giving readers a complete mental model for building and debugging high-performance data-intensive systems.
Related event: Book-Length Deep Dive Explains Virtual Memory from First Principles(2 posts)→
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