Terminologies

  • In this material:
  • Nested paging - the address translation mechanism used during the guest-mode when...
    • Intel: EPT is enabled
    • AMD: Nested paging (also referred to as Rapid Virtualization Indexing, RVI) is enabled
    • Nested paging is also referred to as second level address translation (SLAT)
  • Nested paging structures - the data structures describing translation with nested paging
    • Intel: Extended page table(s)
    • AMD: Nested page tables(s)
  • Nested page fault - translation fault at the nested paging level
    • Intel: EPT violation
    • AMD: #VMEXIT(NPF)
  • (Nested) paging structure entry - an entry of any of (nested) paging structures.
    • Do not be confused with a "(nested) page table entry" which is "an entry of the (nested) page table" specifically
  • Virtual address (VA) - same as "linear address" in the Intel manual
  • Physical address (PA) - an effective address to be sent to the memory controller for memory access. Same as "system physical address" in the AMD manual
  • Guest physical address (GPA) - an intermediate form of an address used when nested paging is enabled (more on later)