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US 9,286,101 B2Granted
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AssigneeRed Hat, Inc.
InventorHenri Han van Riel
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A processing device executing an operating system such as a guest operating system generates a bitmap wherein bits of the bitmap represent statuses of memory pages that are available to the operating system. The processing device frees a memory page. The processing device then sets a bit in the bitmap to indicate that the memory page is unused after the memory page is freed.
Claims18
A method comprising:
- generating, by a processing device executing a guest operating system, a bitmap representing a status of a memory page designated by a hypervisor for use by the guest operating system, wherein the bitmap indicates the memory page is freed by the guest operating system;
- requesting, by the guest operating system, access to at least one byte of physical memory associated with the memory page prior to allocating the memory page, wherein the content of the memory page is swapped out to a secondary storage of the hypervisor;
- in response to requesting access, determining the hypervisor discards the content while avoiding retrieval of the content from the secondary storage;
- allocating, by the guest operating system, the memory page after the requesting access and in response to determining the content is discarded;
- and
- updating, by the guest operating system, the bitmap to indicate the memory page is used by the guest operating system.
3 more elements
A non-transitory computer readable storage medium comprising instructions that, when executed by a processing device, cause the processing device to:
- generate, by the processing device of a guest operating system, a bitmap representing a status of a memory page designated by a hypervisor for use by the guest operating system, wherein the bitmap indicates the memory page is freed by the guest operating system;
- request, by the guest operating system, access to at least one byte of physical memory associated with the memory page prior to allocating the memory page, wherein the content of the memory page is swapped out to a secondary storage of the hypervisor;
- in response to the request, determine the hypervisor discards the content while avoiding retrieval of the content from the secondary storage;
- allocate, by the guest operating system, the memory page after the request and in response to determining the content was discarded;
- and
- update, by the guest operating system, the bitmap to indicate the memory page is used by the guest operating system.
3 more elements
An apparatus comprising:
- a memory;
- and
- a processing device operatively coupled to the memory to:
- generate, by the processing device of a guest operating system, a bitmap representing a status of a memory page designated by a hypervisor for use by the guest operating system, wherein the bitmap indicates the memory page is freed by the guest operating system;
- request, by the guest operating system, access to at least one byte of physical memory associated with the memory page prior to allocating the memory page, wherein the content of the memory page is swapped out to a secondary storage of the hypervisor;
- in response to the request, determine the hypervisor discards the content while avoiding retrieval of the content from the secondary storage;
- allocate, by the guest operating system, the memory page after the request and in response to determining the content was discarded;
- and
- update, by the guest operating system, the bitmap to indicate the memory page is used by the guest operating system.
6 more elements
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.