Supported page sizes by processor type

Use the pagesize command with the -a option to determine all of the page sizes supported by AIX® on a particular system.

AIX 6.1 and later supports segments with two page sizes: 4 KB and 64 KB. By default, processes use these variable page size segments. This is overridden by the existing page size selection mechanism.

Table 1. Page size support by AIX and different System p hardware
Page Size Required Hardware Requires User Configuration Restricted
4 KB ALL No No
64 KB POWER5+ or later No No
16 MB POWER4 or later Yes Yes
16 GB POWER5+ or later Yes Yes
Table 2. Supported segment page sizes
Segment Base Page Size Supported Page Sizes Minimum Required Hardware
4 KB 4 KB/64 KB POWER6®
64 KB 64 KB POWER5+
16 MB 16 MB POWER4
16 GB 16 GB POWER5+

As with all previous versions of AIX, 4 KB is the default page size. A process will continue to use 4 KB pages unless a user specifically requests another page size be used.