Re: Multics Hardware security
Memory pages were required in the 386 because you can't really believe to implement virtual memory at the segment level when segment maximum size went from 64K to 4G (and physical memory was quite limited back then).
That said, segments and pages can work together - just manage virtual memory using pages, and manage software security with segments, but OS designers were still unaware of the security implications, and threw away segments because of the performance issues (exactly because of the security checks performed).
Then came AMD and removed segment support altogether.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
