Editing Page table (section)

== {{Anchor|PTE}}Role of the page table ==
In operating systems that use virtual memory, every process is given the impression that it is working with large, contiguous sections of memory. Physically, the memory of each process may be dispersed across different areas of physical memory, or may have been moved ([[paging|paged out]]) to secondary storage, typically to a [[hard disk drive]] (HDD) or [[solid-state drive]] (SSD).

When a process requests access to data in its memory, it is the responsibility of the operating system to map the virtual address provided by the process to the physical address of the actual memory where that data is stored. The page table is where mappings of virtual addresses to physical addresses are stored, with each mapping also known as a ''page table entry'' (PTE).<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.cs.umd.edu/class/sum2003/cmsc311/Notes/Memory/virtual.html|title=Virtual Memory|work=umd.edu|access-date=28 September 2015}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.kernel.org/doc/gorman/html/understand/understand006.html|title=Page Table Management|work=kernel.org|access-date=28 September 2015}}</ref>