FAIL SOFT MEMORY

摘要

A firmware/hardware mechanism in a general purpose computer system automatically provides alternate addressing paths for addressing data in the same or another main memory module when a failure is detected in a portion of the main memory or main memory module. Two types of memory failures are detected and an alternate path provided for each type of failure. The first type is a failure in a memory which is not detected by memory hardware or system interface unit SIU hardware; such failure is handled by an exception processing mechanism to provide an alternate path to a good memory module. The second type of failure is detected by memory hardware or system interface unit SIU hardware; such failure is handled by an interrupt processing mechanism to provide an alternate path to a good memory module.