Memory management unit and method of walking page table

A memory management unit, comprising:

• a page table walker (PTW) configured to acquire, based on a virtual page number of a page table walk request, a page table entry (PTE) from a main memory;
• and
• a page table walk request queue configured to queue a plurality of page table walk requests,
• wherein the PTW is configured to determine, based on virtual page numbers of the page table walk requests queued in the page table walk request queue, associated page table walk requests, among the page table walk requests, in which a corresponding PTE is stored in a same memory cell row of the main memory, and to consecutively provide, to the main memory, access requests for processing the associated page table walk requests.

A method of walking a multi-level page table, the method comprising:

• selecting one page table walk request from among a plurality of page table walk requests in a page table walk request queue, for finding a page table entry (PTE) corresponding to a virtual page number;
• selecting one or more associated page table walk requests by searching the page table walk request queue, when an associated page table walk request having a base address that is the same as a base address of the selected page table walk request is queued in the page table walk request queue, at a current search level of the selected page table walk request;
• specifying, in a memory cell row of a main memory in which data corresponding to the selected page table walk requests is stored, cache lines in which the data is stored, and consecutively providing requests for the cache lines to the main memory;
• sequentially acquiring requested cache lines from the main memory, and processing the selected page table walk requests at the current search level using the acquired cache lines;
• and
• outputting PTEs corresponding to the processed page table walk requests, when the current search level of the processed page table walk requests is a last level.