One embodiment of the present invention provides a system that facilitates prefetching memory pages for a computer program. The system operates by analyzing the computer program within a compiler to identify memory pages accessed within a portion of the computer program. Next, the system creates a map of these memory pages accessed by the computer program, wherein the map is indexed by a program counter for the computer program. A given program counter value indexes memory pages within this map that are likely to be accessed during subsequent execution of the computer program. The system examines the map during execution of the computer program, and if the current program counter for the computer program indexes memory pages in the map, the system touches the memory pages, thereby causing the system to prefetch the memory pages.