diff --git a/Documentation/mm/page_tables.rst b/Documentation/mm/page_tables.rst
index 96939571d7bc..13c196bc48a1 100644
--- a/Documentation/mm/page_tables.rst
+++ b/Documentation/mm/page_tables.rst
@@ -3,3 +3,145 @@
 ===========
 Page Tables
 ===========
+
+Paged virtual memory was invented along with virtual memory as a concept in
+1962 on the Ferranti Atlas Computer which was the first computer with paged
+virtual memory. The feature migrated to newer computers and became a de facto
+feature of all Unix-like systems as time went by. In 1985 the feature was
+included in the Intel 80386, which was the CPU Linux 1.0 was developed on.
+
+Page tables map virtual addresses as seen by the CPU program counter into
+physical addresses as seen on the external memory bus.
+
+Linux defines page tables as a hierarchy which is currently five levels in
+height. The target architecture code for each supported architecture will then
+map this to the restrictions of the target hardware.
+
+The physical address corresponding to the virtual address is often referenced
+by the underlying physical page frame. The **page frame number** or **pfn**
+is the physical address of the page (as seen on the external memory bus)
+divided by `PAGE_SIZE`.
+
+Physical memory address 0 will be *pfn 0* and the highest pfn will be
+the last page of physical memory the external address bus of the CPU can
+address.
+
+With a page granularity of 4KB and a address range of 32 bits, pfn 0 is at
+address 0x00000000, pfn 1 is at address 0x00001000, pfn 2 is at 0x00002000
+and so on until we reach pfn 0xfffff at 0xfffff000. With 16KB pages pfs are
+at 0x00004000, 0x00008000 ... 0xffffc000 and pfn goes from 0 to 0x3fffff.
+
+As you can see, with 4KB pages the page base address uses bits 12-31 of the
+address, and this is why `PAGE_SHIFT` in this case is defined as 12 and
+`PAGE_SIZE` is usually defined in terms of the page shift as `(1 << PAGE_SHIFT)`
+
+Over time a deeper hierarchy has been developed in response to increasing memory
+sizes. When Linux was created, 4KB pages and a single page table called
+`swapper_pg_dir` with 1024 entries was used, covering 4MB which coincided with
+the fact that Torvald's first computer had 4MB of physical memory. Entries in
+this single table was referred to as *PTE*:s - page table entries.
+
+The hierarchy reflects the fact that page table hardware has become hierarchical
+and that in turn is done to save page table memory: one could of course imagine
+a single page table with hundreds of kilobytes of entries, but in practice,
+the hardware needs some help to traverse the memory where the page table is
+stored, and large parts of the memory space is often empty, leading to
+an unnecessarily large and sparse page table. For this reason page tables are
+hierarchical, using parts of the virtual address to branch off at each level.
+By marking a page table entry on a certain level invalid, the corresponding
+range of the virtual address space is left unmapped.
+
+The page table hierarchy has now developed into this::
+
+  +-----+
+  | PGD |
+  +-----+
+     |
+     |   +-----+
+     +-->| P4D |
+         +-----+
+            |
+            |   +-----+
+            +-->| PUD |
+                +-----+
+                   |
+                   |   +-----+
+                   +-->| PMD |
+                       +-----+
+                          |
+                          |   +-----+
+                          +-->| PTE |
+                              +-----+
+
+
+Symbols on the different levels of the page table hierarchy have the following
+meaning beginning from the bottom:
+
+- **pte**, `pte_t`, `pteval_t` = **Page Table Entry** - mentioned earlier.
+  The *pte* is an array of `PTRS_PER_PTE` elements of the `pteval_t` type, each
+  mapping a single page of virtual memory to a single page of physical memory.
+  The architecture defines the size and contents of `pteval_t`.
+
+  A typical example is that the `pteval_t` is a 32- or 64-bit value with the
+  upper bits being a **pfn** (page frame number), and the lower bits being some
+  architecture-specific bits such as memory protection.
+
+  The **entry** part of the name is a bit confusing because while in Linux 1.0
+  this did refer to a single page table entry in the single top level page
+  table, it was retrofitted to be an array of mapping elements when two-level
+  page tables were first introduced, so the *pte* is the lowermost page
+  *table*, not a page table *entry*.
+
+- **pmd**, `pmd_t`, `pmdval_t` = **Page Middle Directory**, the hierarchy right
+  above the *pte*, with `PTRS_PER_PMD` references to the *pte*:s.
+
+- **pud**, `pud_t`, `pudval_t` = **Page Upper Directory** was introduced after
+  the other levels to handle 4-level page tables. It is potentially unused,
+  or *folded* as we will discuss later.
+
+- **p4d**, `p4d_t`, `p4dval_t` = **Page Level 4 Directory** was introduced to
+  handle 5-level page tables after the *pud* was introduced. Now it was clear
+  that we needed to replace *pgd*, *pmd*, *pud* etc with a figure indicating the
+  directory level and that we cannot go on with ad hoc names any more. This
+  is only used on systems which actually have 5 levels of page tables, otherwise
+  it is folded.
+
+- **pgd**, `pgd_t`, `pgdval_t` = **Page Global Directory** - the Linux kernel
+  main page table handling the PGD for the kernel memory is still found in
+  `swapper_pg_dir`, but each userspace process in the system also has its own
+  memory context and thus its own *pgd*, found in `struct mm_struct` which
+  in turn is referenced to in each `struct task_struct`. So tasks have memory
+  context in the form of a `struct mm_struct` and this in turn has a
+  `struct pgt_t *pgd` pointer to the corresponding page global directory.
+
+To repeat: each level in the page table hierarchy is a *array of pointers*, so
+the **pgd** contains `PTRS_PER_PGD` pointers to the next level below, **p4d**
+contains `PTRS_PER_P4D` pointers to **pud** items and so on. The number of
+pointers on each level is architecture-defined.::
+
+        PMD
+  --> +-----+           PTE
+      | ptr |-------> +-----+
+      | ptr |-        | ptr |-------> PAGE
+      | ptr | \       | ptr |
+      | ptr |  \        ...
+      | ... |   \
+      | ptr |    \         PTE
+      +-----+     +----> +-----+
+                         | ptr |-------> PAGE
+                         | ptr |
+                           ...
+
+
+Page Table Folding
+==================
+
+If the architecture does not use all the page table levels, they can be *folded*
+which means skipped, and all operations performed on page tables will be
+compile-time augmented to just skip a level when accessing the next lower
+level.
+
+Page table handling code that wishes to be architecture-neutral, such as the
+virtual memory manager, will need to be written so that it traverses all of the
+currently five levels. This style should also be preferred for
+architecture-specific code, so as to be robust to future changes.
