Page-faults aren't for free (actually kinda expensive) but rather the paging functionality is giving "free" read/write-barriers instead of those being instructi

Page-faults aren't for free (actually kinda expensive) but rather the paging functionality is giving "free" read/write-barriers instead of those being instruction sequences being inside the main program (ie read/write barriers are handled as page-faults by the paging system that the OS already provides to avoid requiring every read/write of the user-code to be aware of moving pointers).