Hi !
I am currently using the Access Flag with software management, and I recently read about the v8.1 evolution with hardware management. From the reference manual:
When the hardware management of the Access flag is enabled, in situations where, without this feature, an Accessflag fault would be generated, the hardware instead performs an atomic read-modify-write of the appropriatetranslation table descriptor to update the Access flag from 0 to 1.
What I understand here is that if I set the AF to 1, any access is done "normally", and if I set the AF to 0, the hardware will update it to 1 and then perform an "normal" access, without the kernel even knowing of this 0 -> 1 update. I don't understand in which case this would be an interesting behavior, or how to use this in practice. What's the difference between this and always having the AF set to 1 ?
Could anyone enlighten me ?
Best regards,
V.
Simple meaning of the words: Access => page/section accessed. Dirty => also written. Means if dirty == 0 => no need to flush, just invalidate the cache for this page/section.Helps also "copy on write" I think.
Thank you for your insight !