Isn't it a bit misleading to say that they are getting computation without executing any instructions? It's true that they are not executing any x86 instructions from the CPU, but the MMU is doing all the work by executing its instructions of address resolution.
Actually is it even true that they are not executing any x86 instructions on the CPU? From my understanding, the handling of page faults needs the CPU to execute some instructions. Maybe I'm wrong, if so could you enlighten me? Thanks.
I'm not very familiar with the x86 architecture, but usually when there's a fault the CPU generally attempts to lookup the address of a "callback" function in an interrupt/fault vector.
I suppose if you setup everything very carefully you can make it fault over and over again without giving it the time to execute any instruction.
Without looking into the specifics, I think it's very possible that the CPU is not actually executing any instructions, just waiting for the MMU to get a hold of itself. After all, in order to simply load the instructions you need the MMU to be responsive (or deactivated I suppose, if there's such a thing as no-MMU x86).
If I understand MMU correctly, it is merely an address translator and physical memory data fetcher. It cannot process page faults, and when it encounters one, it will have to signal the CPU, because the CPU and the OS on top of it knows how to handle faults. Even if faults are generated repeatedly, doesn't the CPU still have to execute the instructions to push the stack which is how this "instruction-less" machine works? Unless there are certain PFs where the MMU will not signal the CPU and tries to handle the fault by itself.
The MMU is not so cleanly separable from the CPU on x86.
386 has both a segment mechanism and a paging mechanism. The segment mechanism has several luxury features like automatic saving and restoring of task context. It is possible to set up a segment descriptor so that the CPU, when jumping (or faulting) to an address in the segment, will automatically save task state at one address (taken from a register) and restore task state from another address (taken from the descriptor). Ibelieve that's what they use here. Hence, free memory accesses.
Actually is it even true that they are not executing any x86 instructions on the CPU? From my understanding, the handling of page faults needs the CPU to execute some instructions. Maybe I'm wrong, if so could you enlighten me? Thanks.