The x86 Microprocessors: 8086 to Pentium, Multicores, Atom and the 8051 Microcontroller, 2nd Edition

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Advanced Processors—80286 to Pentium

IN THIS CHAPTER, YOU WILL LEARN

• The impact that 80286 made to the realm of PCs.
• The major changes that the 80386 architecture offered.
• The programming enhancements of 80386.
• The features of PVAM and the concept of virtual memory.
• The mechanism of address translation in the protected mode.
• The importance and implementation of pro­tection mechanisms in the 80386.
• The issues and methods of task switching.
• The use of the interrupt descriptor table and exceptions of 80386.
• The features of 80486 which are an enhanced set of the ’386 features.
• The idea of burst mode data transfers for both 80486 and Pentium.
• Why data alignment is important for multibyte processors.
• The features of Pentium.
• The cache structure ...