Check out the new USENIX Web site. next up previous
Next: Space overhead of protection Up: Cross-domain calls Previous: Cross-domain calls


Passing arguments

Heap data is owned by a protection domain, so cross-domain sharing of heap data is straightforward--the caller exports permissions to the callee. This is a lightweight form of argument marshaling that does not require data copying or even data structure traversal (for many data structures). Domains can set up shared buffers in advance of the cross-domain call. In a producer-consumer relationship, the producer would maintain read-write access on a buffer and flag value, while the consumer has read-only access on the buffer and read-write access on the flag. Once the permissions are established, they do not need to be modified for every call.

Passing arguments on the stack is more complicated because a protection domain does not own the stack. To pass arguments on the stack, a cross-domain call must be preceded by a call to the supervisor to export any permissions that might be required for the call to work properly, e.g., giving read-write permissions on a stack structure whose address is being passed as a parameter.

Calls to export permissions on a stack frame are stylized and so can be highly optimized. For instance many custom entry points could be provided which take the current top of the stack as the only parameter. They would establish read-only permission for a fixed small number of stack slots by writing directly into the permissions tables. Most calls would fit into one of these patterns, but for those that did not, the dynamic linker could request the generation of a custom entry point for a given stack layout.

We can reduce the number of exports for inter-module calls by hoisting the export out of a loop, reusing stack slots for different inter-module calls, and not changing the permissions until right before the call if the call is unlikely to execute.


next up previous
Next: Space overhead of protection Up: Cross-domain calls Previous: Cross-domain calls
Emmett Witchel 2003-06-12