Kamal,

I have been thinking about this problem for a while, considering the 
Blackfin line of DSPs from Analog Devices. These processors are similar to 
what you describe in that they have address protection but not translation. 
Without translation, you are doomed some nasty page swapping madness. You 
might be able to minimize it by attempting to locate your binaries to 
different addresses such that concurrently running binaries occupy different 
sections of your address space, but you still have severe limitations 
(multiple instances of the same programe, i.e. getty, anything multiuser, 
fork needs to be reworked?!). Personally, I have concluded that although it 
may be possible, the result would be terribly inefficient and not very 
useful for anything academic or commercial.

Best regards,
Jared Momose


>Hello,
>
>  I am working on a new processor whose MMU supports
>protection (user mode, supervisor mode) and memory
>blocks that are segregated. But the MMU does not
>provide virtual to phys addr translation. Is it
>possible to port netbsd onto such an architecture?
>
>thanks
>-kamal
>
>
>=====
>------------------------------------------------------------
>Kamal R. Prasad
>UNIX systems consultant
>kamalp@acm.org
>
>In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, 
>there is:-).
>------------------------------------------------------------
>
>__________________________________________________
>Do You Yahoo!?
>Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
>http://mail.yahoo.com