FEATURES OF 80386:

Two versions of 80386 are commonly available:

1) 80386DX
2)80386SX
80386DX
1) 32 bit address bus
32bit data bus

80386SX
1) 24 bit address bus
16 bit data bus

2) Packaged in 132 pin ceramic

2) 100 pin flat

pin grid array(PGA)

package

3) Address 4GB of memory

3) 16 MB of
memory

80386SX was developed after the DX for application that didnt

require the full 32-bit bus version.It is found in many PCs use
the same basic mother board design as the 80286.Most
application less than the 16MB of memory ,so the SX is
popular and less costly version of the 80386 microprocessor.
The 80386 cpu supports 16k no:of segments and thus
total virtual memory space is 4GB *16 k=64 tera bytes
Memory management section supports
Virtual memory
Paging

4 levels of protection
20-33 MHz frequency

Architecture of 80386
The Internal Architecture of 80386 is divided
into 3 sections.
Central processing unit(CPU)
Memory management unit(MMU)
Bus interface unit(BIU)
Central processing unit is further divided into
Execution unit(EU) and Instruction unit(IU)
Execution unit has 8 General purpose and 8
Special purpose registers which are either used
for handling data or calculating offset
addresses.

The Instruction unit decodes the opcode bytes

received from the 16-byte instruction code queue and
arranges them in a 3- instruction decoded instruction
queue.
After decoding them pass it to the control section for
deriving the necessary control signals. The barrel
shifter increases the speed of all shift and rotate
operations.

The multiply / divide logic implements the bit-shiftrotate algorithms to complete the operations in
minimum time.
Even 32- bit multiplications can be executed within
one microsecond by the multiply / divide logic.

The Memory management unit consists of

Segmentation unit and

Paging unit.
Segmentation unit allows the use of two address
components, viz. segment and offset for relocability
and sharing of code and data.
Segmentation unit allows segments of size 4Gbytes at
max.
The Paging unit organizes the physical memory in
terms of pages of 4kbytes size each.
Paging unit works under the control of the
segmentation unit, i.e. each segment is further divided
into pages. The virtual memory is also organizes in
terms of segments and pages by the memory
management unit.

The Segmentation unit provides a 4 level protection

mechanism for protecting and isolating the system code
and data from those of the application program.
Paging unit converts linear addresses into physical
addresses.

The control and attribute PLA checks the privileges at

the page level. Each of the pages maintains the paging
information of the task. The limit and attribute PLA
checks segment limits and attributes at segment level to
avoid invalid accesses to code and data in the memory
segments.
The Bus control unit has a prioritizer to resolve the
priority of the various bus requests.This controls the
access of the bus. The address driver drives the bus
enable and address signal A0 A31. The pipeline and
dynamic bus sizing unit handle the related control
signals.

The data buffers interface the internal data bus with

the system bus.
Register Organisation:
The 80386 has eight 32 - bit general purpose
registers which may be used as either 8 bit or 16 bit
registers.
A 32 - bit register known as an extended register, is
represented by the register name with prefix E.

Example : A 32 bit register corresponding to AX is

EAX, similarly BX is EBX etc.
The 16 bit registers BP, SP, SI and DI in 8086 are now
available with their extended size of 32 bit and are
names as EBP,ESP,ESI and EDI.
AX represents the lower 16 bit of the 32 bit register
EAX.

 BP, SP, SI, DI represents the lower 16 bit of their 32 bit

counterparts, and can be used as independent 16 bit
registers.
The six segment registers available in 80386 are CS,
SS, DS, ES, FS and GS.
The CS and SS are the code and the stack segment
registers respectively, while DS, ES,FS, GS are 4 data
segment registers.
A 16 bit instruction pointer IP is available along with 32
bit counterpart EIP.

Flag Register of 80386: The Flag register of 80386 is a

32 bit register. Out of the 32 bits, Intel has reserved bits
D18 to D31, D5 and D3, while D1 is always set at 1.Two
extra new flags are added to the 80286 flag to derive the
flag register of 80386. They are VM and RF flags.

 VM - Virtual Mode Flag: If this flag is set, the

80386 enters the virtual 8086 mode within the protection
mode. This is to be set only when the 80386 is in protected
mode. In this mode, if any privileged instruction is
executed an exception 13 is generated. This bit can be set
using IRET instruction or any task switch operation only
in the protected mode.
RF- Resume Flag: This flag is used with the
debug register breakpoints. It is checked at the starting of
every instruction cycle and if it is set, any debug fault is
ignored during the instruction cycle. The RF is
automatically reset after successful execution of every
instruction, except for IRET and POPF instructions.

Also, it is not automatically cleared after the

successful execution of JMP, CALL and INT
instruction causing a task switch. These
instruction are used to set the RF to the value
specified by the memory data available at the
stack.

Segment Descriptor Registers: This registers are not

available for programmers, rather they are internally
used to store the descriptor information, like attributes,
limit and base addresses of segments.
The six segment registers have corresponding six 73
bit descriptor registers. Each of them contains 32 bit
base address, 20 bit base limit and 9 bit attributes.
These are automatically loaded when the corresponding
segments are loaded with selectors.
Control Registers: The 80386 has three 32 bit control
registers CR0, CR2 and CR3 to hold global machine
status independent of the executed task. Load and store
instructions are available to access these registers.
System Address Registers: Four special registers are
defined to refer to the descriptor tables supported by
80386.

The 80386 supports four types of descriptor table,

viz. global descriptor table (GDT),interrupt
descriptor table (IDT), local descriptor table (LDT)
and task state segment descriptor (TSS).
Debug and Test Registers: Intel has provide a set of
8 debug registers for hardware debugging. Out of
these eight registers DR0 to DR7, two registers DR4
and DR5 are Intel reserved.

The initial four registers DR0 to DR3 store four

program controllable breakpoint addresses, while
DR6 and DR7 respectively hold breakpoint status
and breakpoint control information.

ADDRESSING MODES: The 80386 supports overall

eleven addressing modes to facilitate efficient

execution of higher level language programs.
In case of all those modes, the 80386 can now have
32-bit immediate or 32- bit register operands or
displacements.
The 80386 has a family of scaled modes. In case of
scaled modes, any of the index register values can be
multiplied by a valid scale factor to obtain the
displacement.
The valid scale factor are 1, 2, 4 and 8.

The different scaled modes are as follows.

Scaled Indexed Mode: Contents of the an index
register are multiplied by a scale factor that may be
added further to get the operand offset.

Based Scaled Indexed Mode: Contents of the an

index register are multiplied by a scale factor and
then added to base register to obtain the offset.
Based Scaled Indexed Mode with Displacement:
The Contents of the an index register are
multiplied by a scaling factor and the result is
added to a base register and a displacement to get
the offset of an operand.

Real Address Mode of 80386

After reset, the 80386 starts from memory location
FFFFFFF0H under the real address mode. In the real
mode, 80386 works as a fast 8086 with 32-bit
registers and data types.
In real mode, the default operand size is 16 bit but
32- bit operands and addressing modes may be used
with the help of override prefixes.
The segment size in real mode is 64k, hence the 32bit effective addressing must be less than
0000FFFFFH. The real mode initializes the 80386 and
prepares it for protected mode.

Memory Addressing in Real Mode: In the real mode,

the 80386 can address at the most1Mbytes of
physical memory using address lines A0-A19.
Paging unit is disabled in real addressing mode, and
hence the real addresses are the same as the
physical addresses.
To form a physical memory address, appropriate
segment registers contents (16-bits) are shifted left
by four positions and then added to the 16-bit offset
address formed using one of the addressing modes,
in the same way as in the 80386 real address mode.

The segment in 80386 real mode can be read, write

or executed, i.e. no protection is available.
Any fetch or access past the end of the segment
limit generate exception 13 in real address mode.

The segments in 80386 real mode may be

overlapped or non-overlapped.
The interrupt vector table of 80386 has been
allocated 1Kbyte space starting from 00000H to
003FFH.
Protected Mode of 80386:
All the capabilities of 80386 are available for
utilization in its protected mode of operation.
The 80386 in protected mode support all the
software written for 80286 to be executed under
the control of memory management and
protection abilities of 80386.
The protected mode allows the use of additional
instruction, addressing modes and capabilities of
80386.

ADDRESSING IN PROTECTED MODE: In this mode, the

contents of segment registers are used as

selectors to address descriptors which contain
the segment limit, base address and access rights
byte of the segment.
The effective address (offset) is added with
segment base address to calculate linear address.
This linear address is further used as physical
address, if the paging unit is disabled, otherwise
the paging unit converts the linear address into
physical address.
The paging unit is a memory management unit
enabled only in protected mode. The paging
mechanism allows handling of large segments of
memory in terms of pages of 4Kbyte size.

The paging unit operates under the control of

segmentation unit. The paging unit if enabled
converts linear addresses into physical address, in
protected mode.
Segmentation:
Descriptor tables: These descriptor tables and
registers are manipulated by the operating system
to ensure the correct operation of the processor,
and hence the correct execution of the program.
Three types of the 80386 descriptor tables are listed
as follows:
GLOBAL DESCRIPTOR TABLE ( GDT )
LOCAL DESCRIPTOR TABLE ( LDT )
INTERRUPT DESCRIPTOR TABLE ( IDT )

Descriptors: The 80386 descriptors have a 20-bit

segment limit and 32-bit segment address. The
descriptor of 80386 are 8-byte quantities access
right or attribute bits along with the base and limit
of the segments.
Descriptor Attribute Bits: The A (accessed)
attributed bit indicates whether the segment has
been accessed by the CPU or not.

The TYPE field decides the descriptor type and

hence the segment type.
The S bit decides whether it is a system descriptor
(S=0) or code/data segment descriptor ( S=1).
The DPL field specifies the descriptor privilege
level.

The D bit specifies the code segment operation

size. If D=1, the segment is a 32-bit operand
segment, else, it is a 16-bit operand segment.

The P bit (present) signifies whether the segment is

present in the physical memory or not. If P=1, the
segment is present in the physical memory.
The G (granularity) bit indicates whether the
segment is page addressable. The zero bit must
remain zero for compatibility with future process.
The AVL (available) field specifies whether the
descriptor is for user or for operating system.

The 80386 has five types of descriptors listed as

follows:
1.Code or Data Segment Descriptors.
2.System Descriptors.
3.Local descriptors.
4.TSS (Task State Segment) Descriptors.
5.GATE Descriptors.
The 80386 provides a four level protection
mechanism exactly in the same way as the 80286
does.

Paging:
Paging Operation: Paging is one of the memory
management techniques used for virtual memory
multitasking operating system.
The segmentation scheme may divide the physical
memory into a variable size segments but the paging
divides the memory into a fixed size pages.
The segments are supposed to be the logical segments
of the program, but the pages do not have any logical
relation with the program.

The pages are just fixed size portions of the program

module or data.

The advantage of paging scheme is that the

complete segment of a task need not be in the
physical memory at any time.
Only a few pages of the segments, which are
required currently for the execution need to be
available in the physical memory. Thus the
memory requirement of the task is substantially
reduced, relinquishing the available memory for
other tasks.
Whenever the other pages of task are required
for execution, they may be fetched from the
secondary storage.

The previous page which are executed, need

not be available in the memory, and hence the
space occupied by them may be relinquished
for other tasks.

Thus paging mechanism provides an effective

technique to manage the physical memory for
multitasking systems.
Paging Unit: The paging unit of 80386 uses a two
level table mechanism to convert a linear address
provided by segmentation unit into physical
addresses.

The paging unit converts the complete map of

a task into pages, each of size 4K. The task is further
handled in terms of its page, rather than segments.
The paging unit handles every task in terms
of three components namely page directory, page
tables and page itself.

Paging Descriptor Base Register: The control

register CR2 is used to store the 32-bit linear
address at which the previous page fault was
detected.
The CR3 is used as page directory physical
base address register, to store the physical
starting address of the page directory.
The lower 12 bit of the CR3 are always zero
to ensure the page size aligned directory. A move
operation to CR3 automatically loads the page
table entry caches and a task switch operation, to
load CR0 suitably.

Page Directory : This is at the most 4Kbytes in size.

Each directory entry is of 4 bytes,thus a total of 1024
entries are allowed in a directory.The upper 10 bits
of the linear address are used as an index to the
corresponding page directory entry. The page
directory entries point to page tables.
Page Tables: Each page table is of 4Kbytes in size
and many contain a maximum of 1024 entries. The
page table entries contain the starting address of
the page and the statistical information about the
page.
The upper 20 bit page frame address is combined
with the lower 12 bit of the linear address. The
address bits A12- A21 are used to select the 1024
page table entries. The page table can be shared
between the tasks.

The P bit of the above entries indicate, if the

entry can be used in address translation.
If P=1, the entry can be used in address
translation, otherwise it cannot be used.

The P bit of the currently executed page is

always high.
The accessed bit A is set by 80386 before any
access to the page. If A=1, the page is
accessed, else unaccessed.
The D bit ( Dirty bit) is set before a write
operation to the page is carried out.

The OS reserved bits are defined by the

operating system software.

The User / Supervisor (U/S) bit and read/write bit are

used to provide protection. These bits are decoded to
provide protection under the 4 level protection model.
The level 0 is supposed to have the highest privilege,
while the level 3 is supposed to have the least
privilege.
This protection provide by the paging unit is
transparent to the segmentation unit.

31

12 11 10

PAGE
TABLE
ADDRESS
31..12

9 8

OS
RESERVED

U
S

Page Directory Entry

31

12 11 10 9 8 7

PAGE
FRAME
ADDRESS
31..12

OS
RESEV
ED

Page Table Entry

6
D

5
A

4
0

3
0

2
U
S

1
R
W

0
P

Virtual 8086 Mode

In its protected mode of operation, 80386DX

provides a virtual 8086 operating environment to
execute the 8086 programs.
The real mode can also used to execute the 8086
programs along with the capabilities of 80386, like
protection and a few additional instructions.
Once the 80386 enters the protected mode from the
real mode, it cannot return back to the real mode
without a reset operation.
Thus, the virtual 8086 mode of operation of 80386,
offers an advantage of executing 8086 programs
while in protected mode.
The address forming mechanism in virtual 8086
mode is exactly identical with that of 8086 real mode.

In virtual mode, 8086 can address 1Mbytes of physical

memory that may be anywhere in the 4Gbytes address
space of the protected mode of 80386.
Like 80386 real mode, the addresses in virtual 8086
mode lie within 1Mbytes of memory.
In virtual mode, the paging mechanism and protection
capabilities are available at the service of the
programmers.
The 80386 supports multiprogramming, hence more
than one programmer may be use the CPU at a time.