I learnt that the physical address is calculated by shifting the segment address (16-bit) left 4 times and adding it with the 16-bit offset address. The memory in the 8086 architecture is 1M.
My question is if the segment register and the offset value both are FFFFH and FFFFH then the result would be more than FFFFH i.e., more than 1M.
FFFF0
+ FFFF
----------
10FFEF
haw is it actually calculated...??
It does modular arithmetic, dropping any carries. So for a segment of FFFF and offset of FFFF, you compute FFFF0 + FFFF = 10FFEF but it "drops" the initial 1, leaving a real answer of 0FFEF.
The 8086 address bus is only 20 bits wide, which gives a max high address of 0xFFFFF = 1,048,575. It's calculated just the way you did it, but only the low-order 20 bits are used in the memory fetch.
Related
The image is relating to an example of translating in virtual memory. The address of phys. mem. starts from 0x000 ~ 0x0FC, then moves start 0x100 ~ 0x1FC and so on. Why don't it go like 0x000 ~ 0x0FF, and then 0x100 ~ 0x1FF etc. What are the two lowest bits stand for?
Thank you for your answers. This photo came from MIT open course, and they didn't reveal more details about the address. But I finally figured it out in the later example of the courses.
The two lowest bits can always be zero as the following example:
Supports that we have:
4GB of MM size.
64 lines of cache.
ONLY 1 WORD = 4 bytes PER CACHE LINE.
The address have 32 bits because of 4GB of MM.
The partial address defining the line have 6 bits because of 64 lines of cache.
And because the cache size is 2^6*4B
=> The tag have 24 bits (log2(4GB/2^8B))
=> The lowest bits have 2(32 - 24 - 6) bits.
Because there is only a word per block so that the lowest bits, which act as a data boundary(This is what the course said), are always 0.
Considering multilevel paging, If we have a physical address of 32 bits, say 24 bits are allocated for frame number. Whenever a Virtual address is generated, it goes to Page Table and the PTE is 24 bits(ignore control bits) gives frame no. But these 24 bits cannot actually find an address .
So my question is, Are these 24 bits right padded with zeros to reach the base address of that frame ?
Let's take a sample write packet : Suppose that the CPU wrote the
value 0x12345678 to the physical address 0xfdaff040 using 32-bit
addressing
This example is from this site (I didn't understand the explanations in the original post)
Why does the address start at the second bit [31 : 2]
Why isn't the address the same
An address of an aligned, 32-bit chunk always has two zero bits at the end of the address. You can think of this as either writing the address of the chunk to the 32-bit slot or as writing the addresses divided by four to bits 2 through 31 of the address. The result is the same either way since dividing by four is equivalent to shifting two bit positions to the right.
It is said that 8086 Microprocessor has 1MB Memory and 20-bit address, 16- bit data bus . My doubt is that if it is 1MB memory that means (2^20 * 2^3) (1 byte = 8 bits) bits or 2^ 23 bits is the whole memory size. Then as 8086 is a 16- bit register then 2^20 ( from address lines) * 2^4( 16- bit size) is the memory i.e 2^ 24 bits which is not what I calculated above.
So there is a false in my assessment , what is that ?.
Each of the 2^20 addresses refers to an 8-bit Byte.
Some of the 8086's machine instructions operate on Bytes (8-bits) (using registers AH, AL, BH, BL, ...) and other machine instructions operate on Words (16-bits) (using registers AX, BX, ...).
When using a Word instruction, two adjacent bytes in memory (addresses (a) and (a+1)) are treated as a Word datum. I do not recall if the 8086 enforces even address alignment for Word-datum memory references. But, 2^20 Bytes contains only 2^19 Words (aligned to even addresses).
Bits are conserved:
(2^20 * 2^3) = (2^19 * 2^4) = 2^23
I am confused about the definition of word size. I read that the word size of a processor is its data bus width. Like an 8 bit processor has an 8 bit wide data bus. I recently read that the maximum size of the virtual address space is determined by word size i.e. if the word size is n bits the max virtual address space is 2^n -1. But I always thought that maximum virtual address space is determined by address bus width i.e. an n bits wide address bus can address maximum 2^n bytes. So, what is true?
Also, is this related to pointers as an n bit data bus is capable of carrying only an n bit address. So, maximum 2^n bytes can be accessed via pointers.
I'll first say that some of your confusion probably comes from the fact that things were simpler a few decades ago and your understanding of terms is based on these simpler machines.
I am confused about the definition of word size.I read that the word size of a processor is its data bus width. Like an 8 bit processor has an 8 bit wide data bus.
Definitely not. Data bus with is completely unrelated to this. The word size (which has never really been a precise term) of a processor is best loosely defined as the largest natural size for arithmetic which is generally the size of the registers in the machine. This is quite frequently the width of the data path (which is distinctly different from the data bus). The data path is simply the width of the ALUs. The word size is often the same as the pointer size.
I recently read that the maximum size of the virtual address space is determined by word size i.e. if the word size is n bits the max virtual address space is 2^n -1. But i always thought that maximum virtual address space is determined by address bus width i.e. an n bits wide address bus can address maximum 2^n bytes. So, what is true?
No. The size of the virtual address space is simply determined by the number of bits in the virtual page number of the page table (and the TLB). On current amd64 based machines, only 48 bits of the virtual address are useable. The upper 16 are a sign extension of bit 47. On current amd64 machines, the physical address size is 52 bits. These physical address bits are the ones that are sent on the bus. Though even the term bus is really incorrect. Almost all links are point-to-point (DDRx DRAM is an exception) and use a packetized format (header + payload) instead of address wires and data wires.
Also, is this related to pointers as an n bit data bus is capable of carrying only an n bit address. So, maximum 2^n bytes can be accessed via pointers.
Many (almost all even) machines that have a separate address bus, use an address bus that is narrower than the the number of address bits. These bits are simply split up and sent across the bus using multiple clock cycles. DDRx DRAM is another example of this.
the maximum size of the virtual address space is determined by word size
This used to be true, but certain extensions were made to bypass this limitation (namely Physical Address Extension, or PAE) which enables such things as 36 bit memory addresses.
Aside from that, wikipedia defines a word as:
the natural unit of data used by a particular processor design
In almost all cases, this is 32 bits on 32 bit systems and 64 bits on 64 bit systems. You will still frequently find references to 32 bit words on 64 bit systems (partially because amd64 is an extension of intel x86 rather than a revision). Also, as a holdover from the earlier days of modern computing, you will frequently see 32 bit quantities referred to as a DWORD or double word, and 64 bit ones as a QWORD or quad word.
This is something people fight about all the time. I personally use the definition of word size == bus width.