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author | Thomas Schwinge <thomas@schwinge.name> | 2010-12-13 17:11:51 +0100 |
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committer | Thomas Schwinge <thomas@schwinge.name> | 2010-12-13 17:11:51 +0100 |
commit | 2d75167da62e3486836e5f1773e5f1ab06e43fe8 (patch) | |
tree | e44fc83e0b1419836d1b21652ad1d38b8d0af2c4 /microkernel/viengoos/projects/address_space_management.mdwn | |
parent | 217998d56f5b6424a685f8c87f2c0e924d1c89da (diff) | |
parent | 5c5c16e265d8ef56b71f319885f32bf144bdea23 (diff) |
Merge branch 'master' into external_pager_mechanism
Conflicts:
microkernel/mach/external_pager_mechanism.mdwn
Diffstat (limited to 'microkernel/viengoos/projects/address_space_management.mdwn')
-rw-r--r-- | microkernel/viengoos/projects/address_space_management.mdwn | 40 |
1 files changed, 40 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/microkernel/viengoos/projects/address_space_management.mdwn b/microkernel/viengoos/projects/address_space_management.mdwn new file mode 100644 index 00000000..2d00e4f4 --- /dev/null +++ b/microkernel/viengoos/projects/address_space_management.mdwn @@ -0,0 +1,40 @@ +[[!meta copyright="Copyright © 2008, 2009 Free Software Foundation, Inc."]] + +[[!meta license="""[[!toggle id="license" text="GFDL 1.2+"]][[!toggleable +id="license" text="Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this +document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or +any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant +Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license +is included in the section entitled [[GNU Free Documentation +License|/fdl]]."]]"""]] + +[[!tag open_issue_viengoos]] + +In Viengoos, a process's address space is managed entirely in user +space by the process itself. This creates two interesting problems: +dealing with circular dependencies resulting from having to manage the +address space data structures and accessing and manipulating the +address space data structures. + +First, managing the address space requires resources, which in turn +may require address space (e.g., data structures require memory which +require address space, etc.). We currently break this circular +dependency by trying to keep enough resources in reserve that +allocating resources for managing the address space never requires +more resources than are minimally in the reserve. The reserve is +currently chosen in an ad-hoc fashion. It would be nice to determine +it more systematically. Moreover, it would be nice to reduce the +cases in which a reserve is required. This may be possible by +restructuring some of the code. + +Second, the address space data structures are protected using a single +lock. This not only means that only a single thread can be updating +the address space at a time, but that if a thread faults and the +address space is locked, then the process dead locks! It should be +possible to at least walk the address space using lock-free +techniques. This requires updating the address space construction +code such that all addresses remain valid during any given +manipulation. Second, to avoid the mentioned dead-lock problem, we +try to ensure that accessing the data structures will never result in +a fault. This means protecting the stack. An alternative approach is +to use undo buffers. |