Q. The Sun Ultra SPARC processor has numerous register sets that describe the actions of a context switch if the new context is previously loaded into one of the register sets. What else should happen if the new context is in memory rather than in a register set and all the register sets are in use?
Answer: The CPU current-register-set pointer is altered to point to the set containing the new context which takes very little time. If the perspective is in memory one of the contexts in a register set should be chosen and be moved to memory and the new context must be loaded from memory into the set. This process obtains a little more time than on systems with one set of registers depending on how a replacement victim is selected.