From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: mindentropy@gmail.com (mindentropy) Date: Wed, 20 Apr 2011 21:33:39 +0530 Subject: VMA of processes and CPU registers In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <201104202133.39612.mindentropy@gmail.com> To: kernelnewbies@lists.kernelnewbies.org List-Id: kernelnewbies.lists.kernelnewbies.org On Wednesday 20 Apr 2011 4:31:08 pm limp wrote: > Thanks a lot Dace and Vladimir for your replies. > > First of all, I forgot to mention that I am talking for x86 architecture. > > > The CPU registers will contain the virtual addresses. Each and every > > time that the CPU tries to access a virtual memory location, then the > > address will be translated by the MMU into a physical address. > > So, AFAIU the translation to physical memory takes place *only* when the > ALU of the processor has to do some operation which has memory operands > (in this case the CPU needs to deal with the *real* addresses) but not > prior to that. > The address translation happens in the following way: Logical Addr-->|Segmentation Unit|-->Linear Addr -->|Paging unit|--> Physical Addr. If the paging unit is not setup then the linear addr is the physical addr.