RECHNERSYSTEM MIT EINER SPEICHERZUGRIFFSSTEUERUNG ZUM GEBRAUCH VON NON-SYSTEM SPEICHERAUFSCHLAGMITTELN WÄHREND SYSTEMURLADUNGSZEIT

摘要

A computer system including a memory access controller for using non-system memory storage resources during system boot time. A computer system includes a microprocessor, a system memory and a plurality of peripheral devices coupled to the microprocessor through one or more buses. A system controller and a peripheral bus controller control the buses. Many peripheral device controllers contain buffer memory used during normal system operation, by the peripheral device controllers, to buffer data between the computer system and the peripheral devices. The computer system also includes a memory access controller and a configuration storage unit. The configuration storage unit stores configuration control information which causes control logic to configure the buffer memory. The memory access controller controls accesses to the buffer memory associated with the peripheral devices during system initialization to allow use of the buffer memory as a stack or scratchpad RAM.