Question

The banked registers are used for ______

(a) Switching between supervisor and interrupt mode

(b) Extended storing

(c) Same as other general purpose registers

(d) None of the mentioned

This question was addressed to me in final exam.

This interesting question is from ARM Architecture in chapter Processor Families of Computer Architecture

Answer 1

Correct answer is (a) Switching between supervisor and interrupt mode

Easiest explanation: When switching from one mode to another, instead of storing the register contents somewhere else it’ll be kept in the duplicate registers and the new values are stored in the actual registers.