Patent ID: 7802070
Filing Date: 2010-09-21
Classification: G06F

Abstract:
1. A machine-readable storage medium storing instructions for managing a physical memory, comprising: identifying, in the physical memory, a first large page comprising a first user page, a second user page, and an original kernel page, wherein the first large page is a contiguous region in the physical memory; selecting, from a user page-freelist, the first user page of the first large page; changing a first indicator for the first user page to designate that the first user page is changed to a first kernel page; moving the first kernel page to a kernel page-freelist; selecting, from the first large page, the second user page; determining that the second user page can be added to the kernel page-freelist; changing a second indicator for the second user page to designate that the second user page is changed to a second kernel page; adding the second kernel page to the kernel page-freelist, wherein after adding the second kernel page to the kernel page-freelist, the first large page includes only kernel pages, and wherein the kernel page-freelist comprises a plurality of kernel pages and excludes user pages; and coalescing the original kernel page, the first kernel page, and the second kernel page into a first coalesced large page, wherein the first coalesced large page is a contiguous free region in the physical memory that includes memory regions of the original kernel page, the first kernel page, and the second kernel page.