Intel 253668-032US Benutzerhandbuch

Seite von 806
Vol. 3   9-11
PROCESSOR MANAGEMENT AND INITIALIZATION
mode. The protected-mode data structures that must be loaded are described in 
Section 9.8, “Software Initialization for Protected-Mode Operation.”
9.7.1 
Real-Address Mode IDT
In real-address mode, the only system data structure that must be loaded into 
memory is the IDT (also called the “interrupt vector table”). By default, the address 
of the base of the IDT is physical address 0H. This address can be changed by using 
the LIDT instruction to change the base address value in the IDTR. Software initial-
ization code needs to load interrupt- and exception-handler pointers into the IDT 
before interrupts can be enabled. 
The actual interrupt- and exception-handler code can be contained either in EPROM 
or RAM; however, the code must be located within the 1-MByte addressable range of 
the processor in real-address mode. If the handler code is to be stored in RAM, it 
must be loaded along with the IDT.
9.7.2 
NMI Interrupt Handling
The NMI interrupt is always enabled (except when multiple NMIs are nested). If the 
IDT and the NMI interrupt handler need to be loaded into RAM, there will be a period 
of time following hardware reset when an NMI interrupt cannot be handled. During 
this time, hardware must provide a mechanism to prevent an NMI interrupt from 
halting code execution until the IDT and the necessary NMI handler software is 
loaded. Here are two examples of how NMIs can be handled during the initial states 
of processor initialization:
A simple IDT and NMI interrupt handler can be provided in EPROM. This allows an 
NMI interrupt to be handled immediately after reset initialization.
The system hardware can provide a mechanism to enable and disable NMIs by 
passing the NMI# signal through an AND gate controlled by a flag in an I/O port. 
Hardware can clear the flag when the processor is reset, and software can set the 
flag when it is ready to handle NMI interrupts.
9.8 
SOFTWARE INITIALIZATION FOR PROTECTED-MODE 
OPERATION
The processor is placed in real-address mode following a hardware reset. At this 
point in the initialization process, some basic data structures and code modules must 
be loaded into physical memory to support further initialization of the processor, as 
described in Section 9.7, “Software Initialization for Real-Address Mode Operation.” 
Before the processor can be switched to protected mode, the software initialization 
code must load a minimum number of protected mode data structures and code