5.2 Exception Processing Registers
XContext Register (20)
The read/write XContext register contains a pointer to an entry in the page table entry (PTE) array, an operating system data structure that stores virtual-to-physical address translations. When there is a TLB miss, the operating system software loads the TLB with the missing translation from the PTE array. The XContext register duplicates some of the information provided in the BadVAddr register, and puts it in a form useful for a software TLB exception handler. The XContext register is for use with the XTLB refill handler, which loads TLB entries for references to a 64-bit address space, and is included solely for operating system use. The operating system sets the PTE base field in the register, as needed. Normally, the operating system uses the Context register to address the current page map, which resides in the kernel-mapped segment kseg3. Figure 5-10 shows the format of the XContext register; Table 5-8 describes the XContext register fields.
Figure 5-10 XContext Register Format
The 27-bit BadVPN2 field has bits 39:13 of the virtual address that caused the TLB miss; bit 12 is excluded because a single TLB entry maps to an even-odd page pair. For a 4-Kbyte page size, this format may be used directly to address the pair-table of 8-byte PTEs. For other page and PTE sizes, shifting and masking this value produces the appropriate address.
Table 5-8 XContext Register Fields
Copyright 1996, MIPS Technologies, Inc. -- 21 MAR 96
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