Methods and apparatus provide for adding a base address to an external address to produce first intermediate address; using only a first portion of the first intermediate address as a pointer to select one of a plurality of entries in a segment table, each entry of the segment table representing a different segment of a memory using at least a portion of the selected entry of the segment table as a reference to one or more of a plurality of entries in a page table, each entry in the page table including at least a portion of a physical address in the memory and belonging to a group of entries representing a page in the selected segment of the memory; using the second portion of the first intermediate address to produce a second intermediate address; and using at least a portion of the second intermediate address as a pointer directly to one of the referenced entries in the page table to obtain an at least partially translated physical address into the memory for the external address.