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In computing, a virtual address space (VAS) or address space is the set of ranges of virtual addresses that an operating system makes available to a process. The range of virtual addresses usually starts at a low address and can extend to the highest address allowed by the computer's instruction set architecture and supported by the operating system's pointer size implementation, which can be 4 bytes for 32-bit or 8 bytes for 64-bit OS versions. This provides several benefits, one of which is, if each process is given a separate address space, security through process isolation.
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Example
In the following description, the terminology used will be particular to the Windows NT operating system, but the concepts are applicable to other virtual memory operating systems.When a new application on a 32-bit OS is executed, the process has a 4 GiB VAS: each one of the memory addresses (from 0 to 232−1) in that space can have a single byte as a value. Initially, none of them have values ('-' represents no value). Using or setting values in such a VAS would cause a memory exception.
0 4GB VAS |----------------------------------------------|Then the application's executable file is mapped into the VAS. Addresses in the process VAS are mapped to bytes in the exe file. The OS manages the mapping:
0 4GB VAS |---vvvvvvv------------------------------------| mapping |-----| file bytes app.exeThe v's are values from bytes in the mapped file. Then, required DLL files are mapped (this includes custom libraries as well as system ones such as kernel32.dll and user32.dll):
0 4GB VAS |---vvvvvvv----vvvvvv---vvvv-------------------| mapping ||||||| |||||| |||| file bytes app.exe kernel userThe process then starts executing bytes in the exe file. However, the only way the process can use or set '-' values in its VAS is to ask the OS to map them to bytes from a file. A common way to use VAS memory in this way is to map it to the page file. The page file is a single file, but multiple distinct sets of contiguous bytes can be mapped into a VAS:
0 4GB VAS |---vvvvvvv----vvvvvv---vvvv----vv---v----vvv--| mapping ||||||| |||||| |||| || | ||| file bytes app.exe kernel user system_page_fileAnd different parts of the page file can map into the VAS of different processes:
0 4GB VAS 1 |---vvvv-------vvvvvv---vvvv----vv---v----vvv--| mapping |||| |||||| |||| || | ||| file bytes app1 app2 kernel user system_page_file mapping |||| |||||| |||| || | VAS 2 |--------vvvv--vvvvvv---vvvv-------vv---v------|On a 32-bit Microsoft Windows installation, by default, only 2 GiB are made available to processes for their own use. The other 2GB are used by the operating system. On later 32-bit editions of Microsoft Windows it is possible to extend the user-mode virtual address space to 3 GiB while only 1 GiB is left for kernel-mode virtual address space by marking the programs as IMAGE_FILE_LARGE_ADDRESS_AWARE and enabling the /3GB switch in the boot.ini file.
On 64-bit Microsoft Windows, in a process running an executable that was linked with /LARGEADDRESSAWARE:NO, the operating system artificially limits the process virtual address space to 2 GB. This applies to both 32- and 64-bit executables. Processes running executables that were linked with the /LARGEADDRESSAWARE:YES option, which is the default for 64-bit Visual Studio 2010 and later, have access to more than 2GB of virtual address space: Up to 4 GB for 32-bit executables, up to 8 TB for 64-bit executables in Windows through Windows 8, and up to 128 TB for 64-bit executables in Windows 8.1 and later.
Allocating memory via C's malloc establishes the page file as the backing store for any new virtual address space. However, a process can also explicitly map file bytes.
Linux
For x86 CPUs, Linux 32-bit allows to split the user and kernel address ranges in differents ways: 3G/1G user/kernel (default) , 1G/3G user/kernel or 2G/2G user/kernel.