Flexible page sizes for virtual memory

A processor configured to translate a virtual memory address into a physical memory address, comprising:

• circuitry configured to parse the virtual memory address into a page directory entry offset, a page table entry offset, and an access offset;
• and
• circuitry configured to:
• combine the page directory entry offset with a virtual memory base address to locate a page directory entry in a page directory block, wherein the page directory entry includes a native page table size field and a base address of a page table block;
• combine the page table entry offset and the base address of the page table block to locate a page table entry, wherein the page table entry includes a base address of a physical memory page and a size of the physical memory page is indicated by the native page table size field;
• and
• combine the access offset and the base address of the physical memory page to determine the physical memory address.

A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium storing a set of instructions for execution by a general purpose computer to translate a virtual memory address into a physical memory address, the set of instructions comprising:

• a parsing code segment for parsing the virtual memory address into a page directory entry offset, a page table entry offset, and an access offset;
• a first combining code segment for combining the page directory entry offset with a virtual memory base address to locate a page directory entry in a page directory block, wherein the page directory entry includes a native page table size field and a base address of a page table block;
• a second combining code segment for combining the page table entry offset and the base address of the page table block to locate a page table entry, wherein the page table entry includes a base address of a physical memory page and a size of the physical memory page is indicated by the native page table size field;
• and
• a third combining code segment for combining the access offset and the base address of the physical memory page to determine the physical memory address.

A method for determining a number of page table entries needed to address a given virtual address space, comprising:

• determining a page size of each page table entry pointed to by a page directory entry;
• determining a page directory entry address space pointed to;
• and
• determining the number of page table entries by dividing the page directory entry address space pointed to by the page size of each page table entry.