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Restricted Access to Network Interface

 

On systems of this type it is necessary to trap into the kernel to send or receive a message. The network interface uses physical addresses to access main memory on the nodegif. This simplifies the design of the network interface, but requires access in supervisor mode to prevent user applications from destroying or reading portions of main memory that must be protected. Protecting the network interface is also necessary to prevent sending of data to arbitrary nodes in the system. This architectural model is the most common. The Intel Paragon, even though it has two and three CPUs on each node, can be operated in this manner under the Puma operating system.





Rolf Riesen
Wed Jan 22 22:24:20 MST 1997