Shared translation page tables for ownership transfer

A method, comprising:

• determining that an ownership of a physical page in a system memory is to be changed from a first software component to a second software component, wherein a first page table base address of the first software component points to a lowest level page table, and a second page table base address of the second software component points to the lowest level page table;
• starting from the lowest level page table, accessing page tables stored in the system memory that provide a mapping of a virtual memory address to a physical memory address associated with the physical page, wherein the lowest level page table is shared between the first software component and the second software component, the first and second software components having different execution privilege levels;
• identifying a page table entry in a highest level page table that corresponds to the physical page;
• determining a current ownership of the physical page based on an ownership indicator in the page table entry;
• and
• changing the ownership of the physical page by updating the ownership indicator in the page table entry.

An apparatus comprising:

• a processor configured to execute software components having different execution privilege levels;
• and
• a memory configured to store page tables including a lowest level page table shared between the software components having different execution privilege levels, the page tables storing mappings between virtual memory addresses and physical memory addresses over multiple translation levels,
• wherein a first page table base address of a first software component points to the lowest level page table, and a second page table base address of a second software component points to the lowest level page table,
• wherein each page table entry in a highest level page table for a last translation level includes an ownership indicator to indicate ownership of a corresponding physical page being mapped by a given page table entry, and
• wherein the first software component having higher execution privileges than the second software component is configured to:
• determine that an ownership of a physical page in the memory is to be changed;
• access the page tables stored in the memory to determine a mapping of a virtual memory address to a physical memory address associated with the physical page;
• identify a page table entry in the highest level page table for the last translation level that corresponds to the physical page;
• determine a current ownership of the physical page based on an ownership indicator in the page table entry;
• and
• change the ownership of the physical page by updating the ownership indicator in the page table entry.