Abstract
In multitasking systems, during a task switch it is necessary to save the machine state of the current task to continue execution after control returns. The i386/i486 processor directly supports this operation in hardware, which can rapidly switch between tasks. When a task switch is invoked, the i386/i486 processor saves the state of the current task in its TSS, loads the context from the new task’s TSS, performs protection checks, and then starts executing the new task. In the following sections, we discuss how to do a task switch in the i386/i486 system.
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© 1993 Van Nostrand Reinhold
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Ro, SC., Her, SC., Singh, R. (1993). Multitasking. In: Singh, R. (eds) i386/i486 Advanced Programming. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4684-6551-8_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4684-6551-8_7
Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA
Print ISBN: 978-1-4684-6553-2
Online ISBN: 978-1-4684-6551-8
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