Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

I think Multics had both segments and pages.



On the 645 it did, and I think in any realistic alternative it would have too as segments could be of different sizes and the working set could vary.

However for my simplified comment I said "for this discussion == pages" simply because the difference is simply an extra indirection table in memory, with the segment carrying the access control (like a process address space in unix) and the pages being indexed within it.

All of which was an attempt to say that the post to which we are all commenting is a bit overwrought in its complaint about the worst case search required to find a page. After all, that's what systems programming is all about: the grotty complex plumbing required so other people can worry about the performance of their algorithms that do actual work.




Consider applying for YC's Spring batch! Applications are open till Feb 11.

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: