Appeal No. 2001-1578
Application No. 08/771,550
address space of the computer. See page 2 of Appellants'
specification. Since the addresses needed typically exceeded the
address space available in the processor's hardware, this was
done by allocating a separate address space to each task,
resulting in multiple virtual address spaces. See pages 2 and 3
of Appellants' specification. Figure 3 depicts at a high level
the mapping of entities in virtual address space of a multi-
tasking computer system utilizing a conventional multiple virtual
address space operating system of the prior art. See page 15 of
Appellants' specification. As shown in Figure 3, each task can
map the entire virtual address space. Some entities, such A, C,
and L, are mapped in the address space of more than one task, but
are not necessarily at the same virtual address. Other entities,
such as D and P, exist only within a single task. Because the
virtual address of a particular entity in the system of Figure 3
may vary from task to task, there is no persistent virtual
address associated with an entity. See page 15 and 16 of
Appellants' specification.
As an alternative to multiple virtual address space
architecture, it is possible to utilize a single very large
system address space, one which is sufficiently large that it is
not necessary to have multiple overlapping virtual address
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