The Linux Kernel Is Preparing To Enable 5-Level Paging By Default

[Setif]

Data is getting bigger and bigger. Some servers have Terabytes of RAM.

[wizard69]

On the surface this sounds like absolute insanity. We are talking about 64 bit processors here, why would you need more than two levels of paging. Maybe I’m missing something (totally possible) but with the two address ranges, virtual and hardware it would seem like the goal should have been to reduce the number of paving levels.

This is makes me wonder how this impacts ARM and Power. Makes me wonder if there is a good web site that goes into comparing addressing in the physical and virtual worlds for these processors.

[Hibiki Kanzaki]

Yo Dawg I heard you like paging so I put some paging in your paging so you can page while you page

[AsuMagic]

[insert xkcd joke]

[phoronix]

Phoronix: The Linux Kernel Is Preparing To Enable 5-Level Paging By Default

While Intel CPUs aren't shipping with 5-level paging support, they are expected to be soon and distribution kernels are preparing to enable the kernel's functionality for this feature to extend the addressable memory supported. With that, the mainline kernel is also looking at flipping on 5-level paging by default for its default kernel configuration...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Linux-Default-5-LVL-Paging-Def