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In computing, an input–output memory management unit (IOMMU) is a memory management unit (MMU) connecting a direct-memory-access–capable (DMA-capable) I/O bus to the main memory. Like a traditional MMU, which translates CPU -visible virtual addresses to physical addresses , the IOMMU maps device-visible virtual addresses (also called device ...
Memory-mapped I/O is preferred in IA-32 and x86-64 based architectures because the instructions that perform port-based I/O are limited to one register: EAX, AX, and AL are the only registers that data can be moved into or out of, and either a byte-sized immediate value in the instruction or a value in register DX determines which port is the source or destination port of the transfer.
A system bus is a single computer bus that connects the major components of a computer system, combining the functions of a data bus to carry information, an address bus to determine where it should be sent or read from, and a control bus to determine its operation. The technique was developed to reduce costs and improve modularity, and ...
In computing, input/output (I/O, i/o, or informally io or IO) is the communication between an information processing system, such as a computer, and the outside world, such as another computer system, peripherals, or a human operator. Inputs are the signals or data received by the system and outputs are the signals or data sent from it.
An address bus is a bus that is used to specify a physical address. When a processor or DMA-enabled device needs to read or write to a memory location, it specifies that memory location on the address bus (the value to be read or written is sent on the data bus). The width of the address bus determines the amount of memory a system can address.
When the operating system requested memory to load a program, or a program requested more memory to hold data from a file for instance, it would call the memory handling library. This examined the mappings to look for an area in main memory large enough to hold the request. If such a block was found, a new entry was entered into the table.
For hardware functions such as input and output and memory allocation, the operating system acts as an intermediary between programs and the computer hardware, [1] [2] although the application code is usually executed directly by the hardware and frequently makes system calls to an OS function or is interrupted by it.
The operating system is responsible for translating these channel programs before executing them, and for this particular purpose the Input/Output Supervisor (IOS) has a special fast fix function which was designed into the OS Supervisor just for those "fixes" which are of relatively short duration (i.e., significantly shorter than "wall-clock ...