16-bit Memory Addressing

The Original PC and the 8086

Here is a very brief explanation of the memory address system used by DOS. Originally, the IBM-PC used the Intel 8086 processor. This was a 16-bit chip but with the unusual feature that memory was addressed by a combination of a segment register (16-bit) and an offset register (16-bit). However, there was no memory protection system, etc, as this was just an interesting way of providing a bigger memory range than most 16-bit CPUs. The absolute address was computed from:
address = segment*16 + offset
Hence with a 16-bit segment register, you could address a total of 1MB of memory in overlapping 64kB blocks, a huge amount at the time (~1980). It is common to give memory addresses in DOS/BIOS applications in the form [segment:offset] but sometimes you also see it as a linear value, so the BIOS tick counter at 0040:006C could be shown as 0x046C in the dosemu source code.
The 8086 had 4 segment registers: CS, DS, SS and ES which were used for code (with the instruction pointer IP), data (with several registers possible), stack (with the stack pointer register SP) and an 'extra' segment that could be paired with several registers, but was optimized for some tasks such as memory copying, etc.
It also had 4 'general purpose' 16-bit registers, AX, BX, CX and DX, although they all had some specific special usage (e.g. AX was the accumulator, etc). These registers could also be used as pairs of semi-independent 8-bit registers if required (e.g. AH and AL being the upper and lower 8 bits of AX). In addition, there were some special offset registers DI and SI that were intended primarily as index registers for memory access, and had no 8-bit mode.
All of this lead to problems as memory became cheap & plentiful, and programs grew in size towards and beyond the 64kB limit. Hence you would get DOS compilers that had different memory models (and the _near & _far pointer modifiers), depending on whether code and/or data size would exceed 64kB, as then segment manipulation would be needed (slower, and bigger code) to span all of it.

The 80286 and beyond

Then came the 80286, but alas it did not solve the 64kB segment size problem! Intel had designed it to cover 16BM in 'protected mode' for the (then) up and coming OS/2 operating system. The 286 starts in 'real' mode, like an 8086, then you can use a special instruction to put in 'protected mode' where you then have the sort of protection mechanism needed for a proper multi-user multi-tasking OS. But still with the horrible limit of 64kB per segment. Oh, and there was no instruction to get out of protected mode, you had to halt the CPU and use a just prepared keyboard interrupt to switch it!
This sorry state continued until the 386 arrived, when at last 32-bit linear memory models, and proper virtual memory control, were available. At this point the 16-bit CPU registers became the lower part of 32-bit ones (e.g. AX being the lower 16-bits of EAX, etc). Unfortunately, DOS never escaped the 16-bit design and Microsoft Windows still had 16-bit stuff in it by Windows 98, 12 years after the 80386 made its appearance!
However, in its defence the 80286 did support protection attributes for the different segments. For example, you could make the code read-only and the stack non-executable. Had this been used properly in 1982 most of the virus/worm problems that plague Microsoft Windows (and, sadly, others) would not have been possible as you could not use buffer overflow, etc, to inject hostile code. We now have something like this with the latest CPU's 'no execute' settings and, for example, XP SP2, but this is basically patching a bad system architecture.
No one in their right mind would call the 80x86 architecture 'good', but it offers such a low cost/performance ratio that it is a great commercial success. It seems that Intel's Itanium processor has failed to succeed as they hoped due to this effect, the world was not waiting for Intel to give it a 'good' design, it already had the Sun SPARC, the IBM PowerPC, and the DEC Alpha (killed off by HP due to the belief the Itanium would rule it seems?). Ultimately the 80x86 family is a success as it has a big market share, has benefited from huge investment, and has kept reverse compatibility with older CPUs to a remarkable degree.

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