Science Education—Computer Science Education

Virtual memory is a major topic in undergraduate operating systems courses. One aspect of virtual memory, address translation, is often covered in an abstract way. When examples are given, only a piece of the translation is done, using a small translation lookaside buffer or a small single-level page table. Since most students learn best by doing rather than watching, the topic is best understood by having students do realistic address translations. This is problematic since it involves lookup from several large tables of data which are difficult to fit on a piece of paper. The address translation simulator described here solves this problem by presenting the student with complete page tables in a way that allows simple navigation of these tables. The simulator can be used for both teaching and student evaluation