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If the paging unit is enabled, addresses in a segment are now virtual addresses, rather than physical addresses as they were on the 80286. That is, the segment starting address, the offset, and the final 32-bit address the segmentation unit derived by adding the two are all virtual (or logical) addresses when the paging unit is enabled.
In computing, protected mode, also called protected virtual address mode, [1] is an operational mode of x86-compatible central processing units (CPUs). It allows system software to use features such as segmentation, virtual memory, paging and safe multi-tasking designed to increase an operating system's control over application software.
Paging allows the CPU to map any page of the virtual memory space to any page of the physical memory space. To do this, it uses additional mapping tables in memory called page tables. Protected mode on the 80386 can operate with paging either enabled or disabled; the segmentation mechanism is always active and generates virtual addresses that ...
The primary defining characteristic of IA-32 is the availability of 32-bit general-purpose processor registers (for example, EAX and EBX), 32-bit integer arithmetic and logical operations, 32-bit offsets within a segment in protected mode, and the translation of segmented addresses to 32-bit linear addresses.
In a system using segmentation, computer memory addresses consist of a segment id and an offset within the segment. [3] A hardware memory management unit (MMU) is responsible for translating the segment and offset into a physical address, and for performing checks to make sure the translation can be done and that the reference to that segment and offset is permitted.
"Integrating segmentation and paging protection for safe, efficient and transparent software extensions". Proceedings of the seventeenth ACM symposium on Operating systems principles. Section 3: Protection hardware features in Intel X86 architecture; subsection 3.1 Protection checks. doi: 10.1145/319151.319161. ISBN 1581131402. S2CID 9456119.
However, on the 80386, with its paged memory management unit it is possible to protect individual memory pages against writing. [4] [5] Memory models are not limited to 16-bit programs. It is possible to use segmentation in 32-bit protected mode as well (resulting in 48-bit pointers) and there exist C language compilers which support that. [6]
The predecessor of the 80386 was the Intel 80286, a 16-bit processor with a segment-based memory management and protection system. The 80386 added a three-stage instruction pipeline which it brought up to total of 6-stage instruction pipeline, extended the architecture from 16-bits to 32-bits, and added an on-chip memory management unit. [21]