*BSD News Article 1787


Return to BSD News archive

Xref: sserve comp.unix.bsd:1820 comp.unix.wizards:26067 comp.unix.questions:24023
Path: sserve!manuel!munnari.oz.au!uunet!usc!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!ames!agate!dog.ee.lbl.gov!horse.ee.lbl.gov!torek
From: torek@horse.ee.lbl.gov (Chris Torek)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd,comp.unix.wizards,comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: 4.3bsd Usrptmap
Date: 2 Jul 1992 11:34:29 GMT
Organization: Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, Berkeley
Lines: 25
Message-ID: <24316@dog.ee.lbl.gov>
References: <l4et57INN34i@ack.cs.utexas.edu> <24291@dog.ee.lbl.gov>
Reply-To: torek@horse.ee.lbl.gov (Chris Torek)
NNTP-Posting-Host: 128.3.112.15

In article <24291@dog.ee.lbl.gov> I wrote:
>Usrptmap[] is the page table that maps the user page tables.  This
>first-level page table must be in physically contiguous memory (per
>the VAX architecture). ...

Bill Jolitz (yes, that Bill Jolitz :-) ) pointed out that this is
wrong:  the VAX hardware looks up user page tables in kernel virtual
space.  It is only the Sysmap[] PTEs that must be in physically
contiguous space.

He added that:
>In the Univ. Utah emulation of the "old" VM, it was easier to arrange
>things with consecutive physical, which might be where the confusion
>comes!

(I have never dealt with the old Utah code myself, so I think I just
must have confused the VAX page lookup with other multilevel PTE
schemes.  This kind of hardware lookup eventually runs out of levels
and has to fall back on some simple scheme, usually `physical base
address plus offset'.  There are other methods, such as Sun's weird
Sun-3 and SPARCstation MMUs and MIPS and HP-PA software translation
schemes, which give you a different set of drawbacks. :-) .)
-- 
In-Real-Life: Chris Torek, Lawrence Berkeley Lab CSE/EE (+1 510 486 5427)
Berkeley, CA		Domain:	torek@ee.lbl.gov