On Thu, 23 Aug 2001, Hiroo Hayashi wrote: > Note that most MIPS documents use word 'load' and 'store' for instruction, > and 'read' and 'write' for bus transaction. You have to distinguish them. Don't I? > (Here I'm ignoring I/O access to make the point clear.) How do you define an I/O access for MIPS? > The data on a write bus transaction may be a data modified by a store > instruction which was issued some years ago :-) What the OS can do? Report it and panic. The problem with bus errors on MIPS is that one can't distinguish between errors on reads and writes. The former are exact and are not fatal -- i.e. you can terminate if there is a guilty process and try to continue; otherwise panic. The latter are always fatal as they are inexact and a panic is the most reasonable way to recover. With no way to distinguish between the two cases, it's hard to decide if to go the strict way and panic in all cases or to hope a possible failing write will not make the system inconsistent. Maciej -- + Maciej W. Rozycki, Technical University of Gdansk, Poland + +--------------------------------------------------------------+ + e-mail: macro@ds2.pg.gda.pl, PGP key available +
