Efficient translation lookaside buffer miss processing in computer systems with a large range of page sizes

A computer system, comprising:

• a processor including a translation lookaside buffer;
• a system memory coupled to said processor and containing pages in a pre-designated space that are larger than or equal to a threshold size, said system memory containing a page table with multiple levels, said page table able to convert an original virtual address of a page of data stored in system memory into a corresponding physical address of the page of data, wherein conversion of a page of data above the threshold size occurs by determining from the original virtual address whether the virtual address corresponds to a page above the threshold size and, if so, by eliminating one or more levels of said page table;
• and
• a disk drive coupled to said processor;
• wherein said processor is capable of generating a first virtal address or a second virtual address, depending on whether the original virtual address corresponds to a page above the threshold size, said first and second virtual addresses corresponding to entries in said page table, and said first or second virtual addresses used to convert said original virtual address to the physical address.

A method, comprising:

• by examination of first virtual address, determining whether the first virtual address corresponds to a page in memory that is of a size greater than or equal to a threshold;
• if the virtual address corresponds to a page that is of a size greater than or equal to the threshold, generating a second virtual address or a third virtual address of a page table entry based on whether the size of the page exceeds the threshold as encoded in one or more bits in said first virtual address;
• and
• translating the first virtual address to a physical address using, depending on the page size, said second or third virtual address and using a multi-level page table in which at least one level of the table is not used in the translation.