- * The kernel spends a lot of time changing both the top-level page directory
- * and lower-level pagetable pages. The Guest doesn't know physical addresses,
- * so while it maintains these page tables exactly like normal, it also needs
- * to keep the Host informed whenever it makes a change: the Host will create
- * the real page tables based on the Guests'.
+ * Now, unfortunately, this isn't the whole story: Intel added Physical Address
+ * Extension (PAE) to allow 32 bit systems to use 64GB of memory (ie. 36 bits).
+ * These are held in 64-bit page table entries, so we can now only fit 512
+ * entries in a page, and the neat three-level tree breaks down.
+ *
+ * The result is a four level page table:
+ *
+ * cr3 --> [ 4 Upper ]
+ * [ Level ]
+ * [ Entries ]
+ * [(PUD Page)]---> +---------+
+ * | --------->+---------+
+ * | | | PADDR1 |
+ * Mid-level | | PADDR2 |
+ * (PMD) page | | |
+ * | | Lower-level |
+ * | | (PTE) page |
+ * | | | |
+ * .... ....
+ *
+ *
+ * And the virtual address is decoded as:
+ *
+ * 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
+ * |<-2->|<--- 9 bits ---->|<---- 9 bits --->|<------ 12 bits ------>|
+ * Index into Index into mid Index into lower Offset within page
+ * top entries directory page pagetable page
+ *
+ * It's too hard to switch between these two formats at runtime, so Linux only
+ * supports one or the other depending on whether CONFIG_X86_PAE is set. Many
+ * distributions turn it on, and not just for people with silly amounts of
+ * memory: the larger PTE entries allow room for the NX bit, which lets the
+ * kernel disable execution of pages and increase security.
+ *
+ * This was a problem for lguest, which couldn't run on these distributions;
+ * then Matias Zabaljauregui figured it all out and implemented it, and only a
+ * handful of puppies were crushed in the process!
+ *
+ * Back to our point: the kernel spends a lot of time changing both the
+ * top-level page directory and lower-level pagetable pages. The Guest doesn't
+ * know physical addresses, so while it maintains these page tables exactly
+ * like normal, it also needs to keep the Host informed whenever it makes a
+ * change: the Host will create the real page tables based on the Guests'.