Global Descriptor Table

The Global Descriptor Table or GDT is a data structure used by Intel x86-family processors starting with the 80286 in order to define the characteristics of the various memory areas used during program execution, including the base address, the size and access privileges like executability and writability. These memory areas are called segments in Intel terminology.

The GDT can hold things other than segment descriptors as well. Every 8-byte entry in the GDT is a descriptor, but these can be Task State Segment (or TSS) descriptors, Local Descriptor Table (LDT) descriptors, or Call Gate descriptors. The last one, Call Gates, are particularly important for transferring control between x86 privilege levels although this mechanism is not used on most modern operating systems.

There is also an LDT or Local Descriptor Table. The LDT is supposed to contain memory segments which are private to a specific program, while the GDT is supposed to contain global segments. The x86 processors contain facilities for automatically switching the current LDT on specific machine events, but no facilities for automatically switching the GDT.

Every memory access which a program can perform always goes through a segment. On the 386 processor and later, because of 32-bit segment offsets and limits, it is possible to make segments cover the entire addressable memory, which makes segment-relative addressing transparent to the user.

In order to reference a segment, a program must use its index inside the GDT or the LDT. Such an index is called a segment selector or selector in short. The selector must generally be loaded into a segment register to be used. Apart from the machine instructions which allow one to set/get the position of the GDT (and of the Interrupt Descriptor Table) in memory, every machine instruction referencing memory has an implicit Segment Register, occasionally two. Most of the time this Segment Register can be overridden by adding a Segment Prefix before the instruction.

Loading a selector into a segment register automatically reads the GDT or the LDT and stores the properties of the segment inside the processor itself. Subsequent modifications to the GDT or LDT will not be effective unless the segment register is reloaded.