When a large memory region is shared each process currently maps it using its own page tables. When several processes map the same region the overhead for these page tables is significant. Shared page tables allows the processes to all use the same set of page tables for the shared region. This results in significant memory savings and performance gains.

In this paper I will discuss how page tables are shared, how the decision to share is made, the issues it introduces in the memory management subsystem, and what applications can benefit from it.

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