There are existing sources covering how PowerPC memory
management hardware works. There are the reference manuals
available from companies like Freescale. There is sample
code showing how, for example, page tables are searched,
how to handle TLB misses, etc. There is no need to
cover that.
Solaris/PPC 2.6 adhered to the policy: "don't fight
the hardware", so there are no big surprises in the
low-level code to manage pagetables. It also does not
do anything that requires changes to common VM code.
Those interfaces are the same for Sparc, x86 and PowerPC
(and for that matter, IA64).
Within those constraints, there is some freedom of choice.
The messages to follow will cover the following:
1. Comments about the generic Solaris HAT interfaces;
2. Solaris/PPC 2.6 design choices;
3. Implementation details
a) What resources are managed by the HAT code;
b) What data structures are used;
c) What changes were made in Solaris/PPC 2.11;
d) Future direction.
-- Guy Shaw
