Virtual memory and paging isn't just about protection/security/process isolation. It's also about making the most effective use of physical memory -- process vi

Virtual memory and paging isn't just about protection/security/process isolation. It's also about making the most effective use of physical memory -- process virtual usage can exceed process RSS and not just because of swapping -- and providing a set of abstractions for managing memory generally. The OS and the allocator are working together, with the OS having a lot of smarts on machine usage in order to make that Fairly Smart in the general case. So I don't think there's an automatic win in terms of performance by ridding yourself of it. Especially if you're running through the (pretty slow) WASM VM layer anyways. For some applications (e.g. databases), running unikernel or closer to kernel and having direct access to the MMU could be a big win (e.g. see https://github.com/tuhhosg/exmap https://github.com/tuhhosg/exmap & https://github.com/viktorleis/vmcache https://github.com/viktorleis/vmcache & https://www.cs.cit.tum.de/fileadmin/w00cfj/dis/_my_direct_uploads/vmcache.pdf https://www.cs.cit.tum.de/fileadmin/w00cfj/dis/_my_direct_up...). For general applications esp those written to a POSIX standard or making assumptions that the machine they're running on looks like a typical modern day computer? Dubious. You'd end up writing a bunch of what the VMM layer does in user code.