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In computing, a base address is an address serving as a reference point ("base") for other addresses. Related addresses can be accessed using an addressing scheme.. Under the relative addressing scheme, to obtain an absolute address, the relevant base address is taken and an offset (aka displacement) is added to it.
In computer engineering and low-level programming (such as assembly language), an offset usually denotes the number of address locations added to a base address in order to get to a specific absolute address. In this (original) meaning of offset, only the basic address unit, usually the 8-bit byte, is used to
The base address from the table fulfills the same role that the literal value of the segment register fulfills in real mode; the segment registers have been converted from direct registers to indirect registers. Each segment can be assigned one of four ring levels used for hardware-based computer security. Each segment descriptor also contains ...
A computer program commonly changes its control flow to make decisions and use different parts of the code. Such transfers may be direct, in that the target address is written in the code itself, or indirect, in that the target address itself is a variable in memory or a CPU register.
Any of the addressing modes mentioned in this article could have an extra bit to indicate indirect addressing, i.e. the address calculated using some mode is in fact the address of a location (typically a complete word) which contains the actual effective address. Indirect addressing may be used for code or data.
Direct address: ADD.A address 1 — add the value stored at address 1; Memory indirect: ADD.M address 1 — read the value in address 1, use that value as another address and add that value; Many ISAs also have registers that can be used for addressing as well as math tasks. This can be used in a one-address format if a single address register ...
As mentioned, by working under VM86 mode the segmentation mechanism is reconfigured to work just like under real mode, but the paging mechanism is still active, and it is transparent to the real mode code; thus, memory protection is still applicable, and so is the isolation of the address space.
The invention of dynamic address translation (the function provided by an MMU) originally reduced the need for position-independent code because every process could have its own independent address space (range of addresses). However, multiple simultaneous jobs using the same code created a waste of physical memory.