Memory Protection Unit
ARM DDI 0363G Copyright © 2006-2011 ARM Limited. All rights reserved. 7-4
ID073015 Non-Confidential
Region attributes
Each region has a number of attributes associated with it. These control how a memory access
is performed when the processor accesses an address that falls within a given region.
See Memory types on page 7-7 for more information about memory types, and Region attributes
on page 7-8 for a description of how to assign types and attributes to a region.
Region access permissions
Each region can be given no access, read-only access, or read/write access permissions for
Privileged or all modes. In addition, each region can be marked as eXecute Never (XN) to
prevent instructions being fetched from that region.
For example, if a User mode application attempts to access a Privileged mode access only region
a permission fault occurs.
The ARM architecture uses constants known as inline literals to perform address calculations.
The assembler and compiler automatically generate these constants and they are stored inline
with the instruction code. To ensure correct operation, only a memory region that has
permission for data read access can execute instructions. For more information, see the ARM
Architecture Reference Manual. For information about how to program access permissions, see
Table 4-36 on page 4-56.
Instructions cannot be executed from regions with Device or Strongly-ordered memory type
attributes. The processor treats such regions as if they have XN permissions.
7.1.2 Overlapping regions
You can program the MPU with two or more overlapping regions. For overlapping regions, a
fixed priority scheme determines attributes and permissions for memory access to the
overlapping region. Attributes and permissions for region 11 take highest priority, those for
region 0 take lowest priority. For example:
Region 2 Is 4KB in size, starting from address
0x3000
. Privileged mode has full
access, and User mode has read-only access.
Region 1 Is 16KB in size, starting from address
0x0000
. Both Privileged and User
modes have full access.
When the processor performs a data write to address
0x3010
while in User mode, the address
falls into both region 1 and region 2, as Figure 7-1 shows. Because these regions have different
permissions, the permissions associated with region 2 are applied. Because User mode is read
access only for this region, a permission fault occurs, causing a data abort.
Figure 7-1 Overlapping memory regions
0x4000
0x0000
0x3000
0x3010
Region 1
Region 2
To Next Page
Loading...
