cspw@alpha.cs.ru.ac.za (Pete Wentworth) (03/24/91)
I am in need of some info about how the SPARC traps work. Presently we have only the Sun Assembly code manual, and some Sparc documentation on order. I am wanting to use the tagged arithmetic feature and the memory alignment traps to deliberately provoke the hardware traps (to initiate garbage collection, and so on). 1. Is there some specific reference that tells me what has to be done in order to write and install trap handlers? 2. Does anyone have some code that I could look at to do this sort of thing? 3. On the Vax, the lowest virtual page 0 of a program's address space is protected, and this often helps catch NIL pointer references. I have heard that it is not too difficult to set up the 80386 registers so that a portion of low memory is made protected, and similar trapping can be done there. Is there anything similar on SPARC (i.e. a mechanism whereby I can protect some regions of the process address space against writing, reading, or both). References or examples welcome. Thanks EP Wentworth - Dept. of Computer Science - Rhodes University - Grahamstown. cspw@alpha.ru.ac.za