Page Faults | The Backend Engineering Show

Ever hit a hiccup when your program accesses memory that isn’t physically there yet? In this episode, Hussein Nasser breaks down why and how the kernel raises page faults—covering the basics of virtual memory, VM areas (text, data, BSS, heap, stack), and kernel mode transitions—so you understand the clever mechanics (and hidden performance costs) behind on-demand paging.

He then walks you through every flavor of page fault—first-access, stack expansion, copy-on-write, swap-in, file-backed loads and permission violations—complete with timestamps for easy navigation and a succinct wrap-up on why these faults matter in real-world backend engineering.

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