System and method for detecting access to a peripheral device using a debug register

摘要

In a microprocessor, a debug facility traps accesses to a peripheral device, such as a speaker, residing at I/O port addresses. In one embodiment, a number of debug registers are provided for a system or an application program to set a trap at specific I/O or memory address, and to associate the specified address to an exception handling program. When another application program accesses the specified address, for example to adjust the settings of a speaker, the exception handling program is triggered to perform a specified task, such as to alert the program that the other application program accessed the device it intended to monitor.