Currently the 32 bit x86 architecture is the most popular type of computer. In this architecture, traditionally the Linux kernel has split the 4GB of virtual memory into 3GB for user programs and 1GB for the kernel.  However, many people insist on using more than 1GB of physical memory on such a 32 bit system.  This makes it necessary for the Linux kernel to jump through some interesting hoops...

Basically the system uses the following tactics:
  * Memory above the physical address of 896MB are temporarily mapped into kernel virtual memory whenever the kernel needs to access that memory.
  * Data which the kernel frequently needs to access is allocated in the lower 896MB of memory (ZONE_NORMAL) and can be immediately accessed by the kernel.
  * Data which the kernel only needs to access occasionally, including page cache, process memory and page tables, are preferentially allocated from ZONE_HIGHMEM.
  * The system can have additional physical memory zones to deal with devices that can only perform DMA to a limited amount of physical memory, ZONE_DMA and ZONE_DMA32.
  * Allocations and pageout pressure on the various memory zones are balanced.

== Temporary mapping ==

The temporary mapping of data from highmem into kernel virtual memory is done using the functions kmap(), kunmap(), kmap_atomic() and kunmap_atomic().
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["CategoryLinuxMMInternals"]