address space
<operating system, architecture> The range of addresses which a processor
or process can access, or at which a device can be accessed. The term may refer
to either physical address or virtual address.
The size of a processor's address space depends on the width of the processor's
address bus and address registers.
Each device, such as a memory integrated circuit, will have its own local
address space which starts at zero. This will be mapped to a range of addresses
which starts at some base address in the processor's address space.
Similarly, each process will have its own address space, which may be all or a
part of the processor's address space. In a multitasking system this may depend
on where in memory the process happens to have been loaded. For a process to be
able to run at any address it must consist of position-independent code.
Alternatively, each process may see the same local address space, with the
memory management unit mapping this to the process's own part of the processor's
address space.
(1999-11-01)
Nearby terms:
address mask « address resolution « Address
Resolution Protocol « address space » Address
Strobe » ADELE » ADES
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