On 31/01/2011 09:31 PM, Darren New wrote:
> Orchid XP v8 wrote:
>> Well, since the microcode is just a bunch of extremely wide bitmaps
>> that open and close various switches, it wouldn't surprise me if doing
>> so in the wrong combination could short-circuit something, or do
>> something similarly bad.
>
> That's a point. I don't think that's real common, tho. There's usually
> something where you're connecting an input to an output. You connect the
> memory bus to the register, not the power in to the power out. :-)

Connect two outputs together, with one trying to drive a line high, and 
the other trying to drive it low, and you could have some "interesting" 
problems.

>> So what you're saying is it lets you access a file like you access
>> memory? (And presumably avoids the data being swapped out to the swap
>> file when you actually want it to end up in some other file anyway...)
>
> Yes, precisely.

OK. So what's all this stuff about "the OS loads programs by memory 
mapping them"? (Hopefully this will explain why programs show up as 
generating a non-zero number of "page faults", even though no swapping 
is actually happening...)

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