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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.
One of the major improvements the PCI Local Bus had over other I/O architectures was its configuration mechanism. In addition to the normal memory-mapped and I/O port spaces, each device function on the bus has a configuration space, which is 256 bytes long, addressable by knowing the eight-bit PCI bus, five-bit device, and three-bit function numbers for the device (commonly referred to as the ...
In contrast, in direct memory access (DMA) operations, the CPU is uninvolved in the data transfer. The term can refer to either memory-mapped I/O (MMIO) or port-mapped I/O (PMIO). PMIO refers to transfers using a special address space outside of normal memory, usually accessed with dedicated instructions, such as IN and OUT in x86 architectures.
An alternative method is via instruction-based I/O which requires that a CPU have specialized instructions for I/O. [1] Both input and output devices have a data processing rate that can vary greatly. [2] With some devices able to exchange data at very high speeds direct access to memory (DMA) without the continuous aid of a CPU is required. [2]
For system architectures in which port I/O is a distinct address space from the memory address space, an IOMMU is not used when the CPU communicates with devices via I/O ports. In system architectures in which port I/O and memory are mapped into a suitable address space, an IOMMU can translate port I/O accesses.
Memory-mapped I/O, an alternative to port I/O; a communication between CPU and peripheral device using the same instructions, and same bus, as between CPU and memory; Virtual memory, technique which gives an application program the impression that it has contiguous working memory, while in fact it is physically fragmented and may even overflow ...
[1] Reading a hardware register in "peripheral units" — computer hardware outside the CPU — involves accessing its memory-mapped I/O address or port-mapped I/O address with a "load" or "store" instruction, issued by the processor.
Memory addresses for main memory, memory-mapped I/O, as well as for virtual memory; Device addresses on an expansion bus; Sector addressing for disk drives; File names on a particular volume; Various kinds of network host addresses in computer networks; Uniform resource locators in the Internet.