Patent ID: 7500073

Claim:
A method for relocating virtual to physical memory mappings in a computer system, the method comprising: allocating a new hardware mapping entry (HME) block at a new location in memory; copying contents of an old HME block to the new HME block, wherein the old and the new HME blocks are part of a linked list of HME blocks within a hash bucket header in a page table with each HME block comprising a linked list of HMEs, the copying of contents including providing a first lock on the old and the new HME block; adding the new HME block to the linked list of HME blocks; copying the linked list of HMEs from the old HME block to the new HME block by providing a second lock corresponding to a physical page identified by the corresponding HME; releasing the second lock for the HMEs on the physical page after successful copying of the linked list of HMEs; removing the old HME block from the linked list; and releasing the first lock on the old and the new HME block, wherein the first and second locks ensuring contents in both the HME block and the HMEs within the HME block are locked for a period sufficient enough to copy the HMEs and the corresponding HME block from the old location to the new location.