Some of the necessary changes have snuck in as Windows has gained the ability to support large memory machines (up to 32GB in Windows 2000® and 64GB in Windows XP on the IA32 architecture machines). For example, the size of the page addresses being used has increased, because a ?standard? page table entry (PTE) on IA32 only uses 20 bits of addressing to describe the physical page location. Since 2²⁰ pages describe 4GB of physical memory (each of those 2²⁰ pages describes 2¹² bytes, and 2²⁰ * 2¹² = 2³² bytes) it is clear that this is not enough addressing to describe machines with more physical memory. Of course, the solution was to increase the size of the PTE ? use 64 bits instead of 32 bits. Then those extra bits can be used to describe additional physical memory.  Intel chose to use 4 of those extra bits, with the remaining 28 ?extra? bits ?reserved for future use? ? no big surprise there!  So, Windows gained the ability to support large page table entries.

One down-side to this approach is that it means we can only store half as many PTEs in one page of memory. Thus, instead of getting 1024 entries in a page table, we now get 512 entries in the page table. The same applies to the page directory (since it also needs to expand to fit in more physical memory addressing bits). Thus, one page directory describes 512 (2⁹) page tables. Each page table describes 512 (2⁹) pages. One page directory thus describes 1GB of virtual address space (2⁹ * 2⁹ * 2¹² = 2³⁰). So we need four pages to describe the same 4GB virtual address space.

When we move up to the IA64 architecture platforms, we increase the size of a page to 8k. Thus, the PAGE_SIZE constant is double the 4k most developers expect from their work on the IA32 architecture machines. Each page table describes 1024 (2¹⁰) entries, and each page directory describes 1024 (2¹⁰) page tables. Thus, one page directory page describes 8GB of virtual address space (2¹⁰ * 2¹⁰ * 2¹³ = 2³³ or 8GB). But this still isn?t enough! No worries. We introduce another layer of table management; to distinguish it from the page directory, we can call it the parent page entry (PPE, see Figure 1). Each parent page contains 1024 page table entries. With this, the virtual address space is now 8TB (2⁴³ bytes). By using one 8TB address space for the operating system, and a second 8TB address space for user applications, Windows XP and .NET now offer a full 16TB address space!

Figure 1 ? Parent Page Entry