Yes, page fault exceptions happen within the CPU, they cannot happen in software. I think of it as C is close to assembly and does not check every memory addres

Yes, page fault exceptions happen within the CPU, they cannot happen in software. I think of it as C is close to assembly and does not check every memory address is referencing. It just compiles and CPU starts running it. If somehow a memory of 0 is dereferenced, it is already run by the CPU in its fetch/decode cycle. but of course once the excetion happens, Kernel is responsible for killing the actual process. So both CPU and kernel do it together.