
2–8
Internal Architecture
29 September 1997 – Subject To Change
21164PC Microarchitecture
•
One superpage maps virtual address bits <39:13> to physical address bits
<39:13>, on a one-to-one basis, when virtual address bits <42:41> equal 2. This
maps the entire physical address space four times over to the quadrant of the vir-
tual address space.
•
The other superpage maps virtual address bits <29:13> to physical address bits
<29:13>, on a one-to-one basis, and forces physical address bits <39:30> to 0
when virtual address bits <42:30> equal 1FFE
16
. This effectively maps a 30-bit
region of physical address space to a single region of the virtual address space
defined by virtual address bits <42:30> = 1FFE
16
.
Access to either superpage mapping is allowed only while executing in kernel mode.
Superpage mapping allows the operating system to map all physical memory to a
privileged virtual memory region.
2.1.1.5 Interrupts
The IDU exception logic supports three sources of interrupts:
•
Hardware interrupts
There are 7 level-sensitive hardware interrupt sources supplied by the following
signals:
irq_h<3:0>
mch_hlt_irq_h
pwr_fail_irq_h
sys_mch_chk_irq_h
•
Software interrupts
There are 15 prioritized software interrupts sourced by the software interrupt
request register (SIRR) (see Section 5.1.22).
•
Asynchronous system traps (ASTs)
There are 4 ASTs sourced by the asynchronous system trap request (ASTRR)
register.
The serial interrupt, the performance counter interrupts, and irq_h<3:0> are all
maskable by bits in the ICSR (see Section 5.1.17). The four AST traps are maskable
by bits in the ASTER (see Section 5.1.21). In addition, the AST traps are qualified
by the current processor mode. All interrupts are disabled when the processor is exe-
cuting PALcode.