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User Process Space--kuseg

The total 32-bit address space is divided in half. Addresses with a most significant bit of 0 constitute the 2 GB user process space. When executing in user mode, only addresses in kuseg are valid; an attempt to use an address with bit 31=1 causes an addressing exception.

Access to kuseg is always mapped through the TLB. The kernel creates a unique address space for each user process. Of the 219 possible pages in an address space, most are typically unassigned--few processes ever occupy more than a fraction of kuseg--and many are shared pages of program text from dynamic shared objects (DSOs) that are mapped into the address space of every process that needs them.


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