Logical Address

A logical address consists of two parts: a segment indentifier and an offset that specifies the relative address within the segment.

The segment identifier is a 16-bit field called segment selector, while the offset is a 32-bit field.

To make it easy to retrieve the segment selector quickly, the processor provides segmentation registors whose only purpose is hold the segment selectors.

These segmentation registers are called cs, ds, ss, es, fs and gs. Althrough there are six of them, a program can reuse them for different purpose by saving its content in memory and then restoring them later.

Three of the six registers have specific purpose:

cs         The code segment register, which points a segment containing a program instructions.

ds         The data segment register, which points a segment contianing the global data and static data structures.

ss         The stack segment register, which points a segment contianing the current program stack.

The remaining three registers are general purpose and may refer to arbitery data segments.

The cs register has another function: it includes a 2-bit field that specifies the current privilege level of CPU. The value 0 denotes the highest privilege level, while the value 3 denotes the lowest one. Linux uses only level 0 and 3, which are respectively called kernel mode and user mode.