Patent ID: 8180980

Claim:
A method of supporting virtualisation of a virtual data processing apparatus with a host data processing apparatus, said method comprising the steps of: executing a stream of program instructions with said host data processing apparatus to emulate processing by said virtual data processing apparatus; detecting with detection circuitry an attempted execution of a memory accessing instruction seeking to perform a memory access operation upon a memory address corresponding to a memory mapped device of said virtual data processing apparatus; writing with memory-abort circuitry to a memory-abort register memory-abort data characterising said memory access operation, said memory-abort data including data indicative of one or more registers accessed with said memory access operation; and triggering a memory-abort exception by execution of memory-abort handling program instructions by said host data processing apparatus to: (i) read said memory-abort data from said memory-abort register; (ii) emulate said memory access operation using said memory-abort data including said data indicative of one or more registers accessed with said memory access operation; and (iii) return to execution of said stream of program instructions, wherein said memory-abort data comprises validity data indicative of whether or not said memory-abort data is valid for said memory accessing instruction that triggered said memory abort exception and, if said memory-abort handling program instructions determine from said validity data that said data characterising said memory-abort is not valid for said memory-abort exception, then said memory-abort handling program instructions read said memory accessing instruction from an instruction memory and determine from said memory accessing instruction one or more parameters for emulating said memory access operation.