[Solved]: How to calculate the size of a page in a two level paging CPU?

Problem Detail: 

I am having difficulties with understanding the concept of paging.

As a result I've got no idea how I can solve the following exercise - I'm lacking one more equation to solve it.

I've read a lot about paging and watched a few tutorials, but I still cannot solve paging problems easily. I'll provide some of the resources I learnt from at the bottom of this question.

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Background:

The CPU has two level paging and the logical and physical addresses are of $34$ bits size each.

The sizes of the page table directory, the table directory and the page are equal.

The logical address $(12345678)_{16}$ has been translated to the $(ba9678)_{16}$ physical address.

What's the size of a single page?

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My attempt:

1. The logical address can be decoded to:
   $$(00\ 0001\ 0010\ 0011\ 0100\ 0101\ 0110\ 0111\ 1000)_2$$ The physical address can be decoded to: $$(00\ 0000\ 0000\ 1011\ 1010\ 1001\ 0110\ 0111\ 1000)_2$$ So, as you can see, they share the last $14$ bits.
   Hence, the number of bits representing offset is $\leq 14$.

2. The physical address looks like this:

   +-----------+-----------+--------+ +-page-size-+-page-size-+-offset-+ +-----------+-----------+--------+ 

   because page size = page table size = table directory size.
   Therefore, we get the following equation: $$ 2\times \text{page size} + \text{offset} = 34 $$
   However it is not sufficient to tell what is the page size. I'm stuck.

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Resources:

• Segmentation and paging
• Wikipedia (discouraged)
• Video tutorial by Anshul Agarwal: part 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5.

Asked By : Mateusz Piotrowski

Answered By : Mateusz Piotrowski

The thorough solution:

1. The virtual address looks like this:

   +-------------+------------+--------+ + table index + page index + offset + +-------------+------------+--------+ 

   where:

   • table index is the index length of an entry in the page table directory. I'll call it $i_t$.
   • page index is the index length of an entry in the page table. I'll call it $i_p$.

   So we have such an equation now: $$ i_t+i_p+o=32 $$ where $o$ represents bits that we need for offset.

2. From the decoded addresses we know that offset cannot be greater than $14$, so: $$ o \leq 14 $$

3. We know that an entry in both page tables and page tables directories needs $i_t + b_d$ of bits where $b_d$ is the number of bits for accounting information (such as dirty bits, protection bits and so on). So, $b_d$ are accounting bits in the page table directory and $b_t$ are are accounting bits in page table.

   So, if $\text{page size} = 2^\text{offset}$ then $\text{page table size} = 2^\text{offset}$ and $\text{page table directory size} = 2^\text{offset}$: $$ \begin{cases} i_t+b_d = o\\ i_s+b_t = o\\ \end{cases} $$

4. We can say thatSince $\text{page table size} = \text{page table directory size}$ then $i:= i_t = i_s$ and $b :=b_d=b_t$, so we end up with a system of equations like this: $$ \begin{cases} i_t+b_d = o\\ i_s+b_t = o\\ i_t+i_p+o=32 \end{cases} $$ $$ o-b_d+o-b_t+o=32\\ $$ and finally because of $b :=b_d=b_t$: $$ 3o-2b=32\\ $$

5. Now we will test different values of $o$ (I'll not test odd $o$'s because $o$ must be dividable by $2$):
   • when $o=14$: $$ 42-32=2b=10\\ \implies b=5\\ \implies i = 14-5=11\\ \implies i_t+i_s+o=11+11+14=36 \neq 32 $$
   • when $o=12$: $$ 36-32=2b=4\\ \implies b=2\\ \implies i = 12-2=10\\ \implies i_t+i_s+o=10+10+12=32 = 32 $$ which seems to be the answer. Let's just make sure there are no other possibilities.
   • when $o=10$: $$ 30-32=2b=-2\\ \implies b=-1\\ $$ which cannot be true - you obviously cannot have a negative number of bits.

Therefore, the size of a page is equal $2^o=2^{12}$.

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Question Source : http://cs.stackexchange.com/questions/45620