The Ra operand is written to memory at this address. If the data is not naturally aligned, an alignment exception is generated.

Notes:

The word or byte that the STB or STW instruction stores to memory comes from the low (rightmost) byte or word of Ra.

Accesses have byte granularity.

For big-endian access with STB or STW, the byte/word remains in the rightmost part of Ra, but the va sent to memory has the indicated bits inverted. See Operation section, above.

No sparse address space mechanisms are allowed with the STB and STW instructions.

Implementation Notes:

The STB and STW instructions are supported in hardware on Alpha implementations for which the AMASK instruction returns bit 0 set. STB and STW are supported with software emulation in Alpha implementations for which AMASK does not return bit 0 set. Software emulation of STB and STW is significantly slower than hardware support.

Depending on an address space region’s caching policy, implementations may read a (partial) cache block in order to do byte/word stores. This may only be done in regions that have memory-like behavior.

Implementations are expected to provide sufficient low-order address bits and length-of-access information to devices on I/O buses. But, strictly speaking, this is out- side the scope of architecture.

4–16Alpha Architecture Handbook

Page 72
Image 72
Compaq ECQD2KCTE manual 16Alpha Architecture Handbook