Chips and Technologies, Llc.

Francis Spahn

James S Blomgren

David E Richter

Jimmy E Bracking

The present invention provides a microprocessor with a special Operation Capture Facility (OCF) mechanism which enables 'faulting' whenever there is (a) a memory access request to any one of a specified plurality of blocks of memory (b) a request to access any one of a plurality of specified I-O ports or (c) any one of a specified plurality of interrupts is activated. This OCF mechanism includes a plurality of special registers which store either (a) an I-O port address, (b) a memory address or (c) an interrupt number. Mask registers are provided which (1) mask bits in the special register, thereby providing the ability to fault on an entire block of I-O access requests or upon activation of any one of a block of interrupts and (2) indicate which type of interrupts should be faulted and to indicate whether I-O should be faulted on a byte, word or double word.

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El Cerrito, CA, United States of America

Francis Spahn