In one embodiment, a method for supporting address translation in a
virtual-machine environment includes creating a guest translation data
structure to be used by a guest operating system for address translation
operations, creating an active translation data structure based on the
guest translation data structure, and periodically modifying the content
of the active translation data structure to conform to the content of the
guest translations data structure. The content of the active translation
data structure is used by a processor to cache address translations in a
translation-lookaside buffer (TLB).