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I’m disassembling a bit of code and I came across:
mov eax, cr3
mov cr3, eax
What is the function of those lines?
This is x86 low-level (bios/firmware/before boot loader) initialization code. We haven’t even setup up caches yet.
It is flushing the TLBs (Translation Lookaside Buffers) by loading cr3 with itself.
Intel even mentions the code in their “Intel 64 and IA-32 Architectures Software Develoment Manual Volume 3A – System Programming Guide”.
You can find that and many more handy manuals at:
http://www.intel.com/products/processor/manuals/index.htm