> Nevertheless, absolute 0 is owned by PR/SM, right?

The 8 KiB area at absolute 0 is the place where the hardware writes status 
information as result of performing the "Store Status" operation. It has 
existed for longer than PR/SM. I would say, it is owned by the hardware.



> There is Absolute addressing, real addressing, and virtual addressing.


... and for practical purposes absolute and real addressing are the same, 
except when takling about the 8 KiB at real address 0 and the 8KiB point to by 
the prefix resigsters.


But wait a minute, isn't there on more level? Absolulte, real, and virtual are 
*within* an LPAR. It is required to support multi-CP operating system 
*instances*. Since PR/SM, each LPAR must have its own "absolute address 0", 
doesn't it? Actually, the requirement has exited since physically partitionable 
CECs had been in place (can't remember exaxtly which were the first such 
machines, 3033, or 308x, or?).


The net would be: Some code is accessing virtual address 0. The DAT feature 
will (with the help of the DAT tables) translate virtual 0  to *a* real address 
(which just happens to always be real frame 0 in z/OS). The hardware will 
recognize an address within the "prefixing area" (8 KiB in z/Architcture, 4 KiB 
in ESA/390 and predecessors, 2 KiB in even earlier architectures?), and will 
translate real 0 (with the help of the Prefix Register) to absolute 0 (for this 
LPAR). Some other part of the hardware needs to translate "absolute 0 of this 
LPAR" to a *physical* memory address (how this works in detail  is far beyond 
my knowledge).


--
Peter Hunkeler



--
Peter Hunkeler

----------------------------------------------------------------------
For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions,
send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN

Reply via email to