How does a shared library work?

[Eldridge, Michael]

> On Fri, Oct 28, 2005 at 10:13:53AM -0500, Eldridge, Michael wrote:
> >> On 10/26/05, janne <jan.moren at lucs.lu.se> wrote:
> [ .. ]
> >> Is the memory controller a part of the kernel?
> >
> >no.  see here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_management_unit
> 
> Well, the MMU only makes up a part of the memory-related stuff that is
> performed in a running Linux system. E.g. think of VM and swapping.

yes, you can do VM without a MMU, but the MMU of a CPU facilitates the
virtual address space mappings.  the fact that the MMU will generate a
page exception, prompting a jump to another handler ties the CPU into
the whole #! pretty easily.

however, i was merely trying to clear up the ambiguation on the part of
"memory controller".  when i hear "memory controller", i usually think of
bus speeds and clock timings to/from memory banks to north bridge or CPU
(on opteron/athlon64) -- more electrophysical characteristics than those
of logical instructions/exception, etc.

he used "memory controller" in reference to the MMU.  you don't typically
have "controllers" in software.  but paging and virtual address space
mappings are very much part of the operating system and not the hardware.

-mike