Sorry Clem and Bob,

I think you are mixing apples and oranges and adding confusion with your use of 
VM to describe two different things.  Relying on my own recollections of the 
early days of virtual memory...  What the PDP-11 does is memory mapping with an 
MMU.  Virtual memory is a concept, described in a seminal ACM article by Peter 
Denning (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_J._Denning 
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_J._Denning>).  Memory mapping and virtual 
memory both require that whatever code or data that a program is permitted to 
access must actually be resident in memory.  While there is hardware in an MMU 
to trap unmapped memory accesses, in a true VM architecture there is no 
aliasing of memory addresses to multiple code or data objects.  Whether 
overlaying is done by overwriting already mapped program memory from storage or 
by remapping program address space to another memory block, the same memory 
addresses are reused to reference different objects.  The MMU cannot tell 
whether the object being referenced is the "correct" object intended by the 
programmer.  Other methods must be employed, such as an indirect "entry-point 
table" that can perform the MMU remapping on-the fly.  In a true VM 
architecture, different objects can be distinguished by their program 
addresses.  This is a key distinction between memory mapping and virtual memory.

That's my 2ยข.

Respectfully,

Larry Baker
US Geological Survey
650-329-5608
ba...@usgs.gov



> Date: Fri, 16 Feb 2018 14:51:27 -0500
> From: Clem Cole <cl...@ccc.com <mailto:cl...@ccc.com>>
> To: Ethan Dicks <ethan.di...@gmail.com <mailto:ethan.di...@gmail.com>>
> Cc: mikestra...@gmail.com <mailto:mikestra...@gmail.com>, SIMH 
> <simh@trailing-edge.com <mailto:simh@trailing-edge.com>>
> Subject: Re: [Simh] pdp11 i/o addressing
> Message-ID:
>       <cac20d2ngaew9cbkitu6sa14hsnsaa1ianhrckdt-q0oikbd...@mail.gmail.com 
> <mailto:cac20d2ngaew9cbkitu6sa14hsnsaa1ianhrckdt-q0oikbd...@mail.gmail.com>>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
> 
> curmudgeon warning below.....
> 

> Date: Fri, 16 Feb 2018 20:23:05 +0000
> From: Bob Eager <r...@tavi.co.uk <mailto:r...@tavi.co.uk>>
> To: simh@trailing-edge.com <mailto:simh@trailing-edge.com>
> Subject: Re: [Simh] pdp11 i/o addressing
> Message-ID: <20180216202305.07e19...@raksha.tavi.co.uk 
> <mailto:20180216202305.07e19...@raksha.tavi.co.uk>>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
> 
> When I teach virtual memory, I start by talking about the 'old days'
> and overlays. I remember Overlay Description Language on the PDP-11!
> 

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