A move engine and
operating system transparently reconfigure physical memory to accomplish addition, subtraction, or replacement of a
memory module. The
operating system stores FROM and TO real addresses in unique fields in memory that are used to virtualize the
physical address of the
memory module being reconfigured and provide the reconfiguration in real-time through the use of hardware functionality and not
software. Using the FROM and TO real addresses to select a source and a target, the move engine copies the contents of the
memory module to be removed or reconfigured into the remaining or inserted memory module. Then, the real address associated with the reconfigured memory module is re-assigned to the memory module receiving the copied contents, thereby creating a virtualized
physical mapping from the addressable real
address space being utilized by the
operating system into a virtual
physical address space. During the process of moving the memory contents, the operating
system stalls Write memory requests addressed to the real
address space currently associated with the sourcing memory module indicated by either the FROM or TO real
address space. As will be appreciated, a memory module can be inserted, removed or replaced in physical memory without the operating
system having to stop all memory operations in the memory to accomplish the physical memory change.