Academic Program

Address Translation

Address Translation

Virtual addresses used by software are converted to physical addresses by the Central Processing Unit's (CPU's) memory management unit (MMU) before being sent to the system bus.

mmu-mx.png

The MMU on PIC32MX devices with the MIPS M4K core perform the following translations:

  • Fixed Mapping Translation (FMT) on KSEG0/KSEG1
    • Physical Address = (Virtual Address) AND (0x1FFFFFFF)

Please refer to PIC32MX FRM Section 3. Memory Organization (DS61115F) for detailed coverage on the FMT.

Also, see chapter 6 of "See MIPS Run" for a good discussion on low-level memory management in MIPS CPUs.