Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
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.
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 ...
It is the fastest and most flexible cache organization that uses an associative memory. The associative memory stores both the address and content of the memory word. [further explanation needed] In the boot process of some computers, a memory map may be passed on from the firmware to instruct an operating system kernel about memory layout. It ...
In virtualization, guest operating systems can use hardware that is not specifically made for virtualization. Higher performance hardware such as graphics cards use DMA to access memory directly; in a virtual environment all memory addresses are re-mapped by the virtual machine software, which causes DMA devices to fail.
At this point, the BIOS or operating system will program the memory-mapped addresses and I/O port addresses into the device's BAR configuration registers. These addresses stay valid as long as the system remains turned on. Upon power-off, these settings are lost and the procedure is repeated next time the system is powered back on.
The main difference between System V shared memory (shmem) and memory mapped I/O (mmap) is that System V shared memory is persistent: unless explicitly removed by a process, it is kept in memory and remains available until the system is shut down. mmap'd memory is not persistent between application executions (unless it is backed by a file).
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.
A memory-mapped file is a segment of virtual memory [1] that has been assigned a direct byte-for-byte correlation with some portion of a file or file-like resource. This resource is typically a file that is physically present on disk, but can also be a device, shared memory object, or other resource that an operating system can reference through a file descriptor.