Genode 11.05 Gets New API for Type-safe IPC, Runs L4Linux
Linked by nfeske on Thu 26th May 2011 11:41 UTC
OSNews, Generic OSes The concern for efficient and easy-to-use inter-process communication is prevalent among microkernel-based operating systems. Genode has always taken an unorthodox stance on this subject by disregarding the time-tested standard solution of using an IDL compiler in favour of sticking to raw C++ mechanisms. The new version 11.05 of the OS framework takes another leap by introducing a brand new API for implementing procedure calls across process boundaries, facilitating type safety and ease of use, yet still not relying on external tools. Furthermore, the platform support for the Fiasco.OC kernel has been extended to the complete feature set of the framework. The most significant new features are L4Linux (on Fiasco.OC), an experimental integration of GDB, ARM RealView PBX device drivers, and device I/O support for the MicroBlaze platform.
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krishna
Member since:
2008-08-11

... then when a process A wants to send a message to another process B, then process A simply allocates a buffer from the shared memory, and then informs process B about the message via a semaphore. Then process B reads the message, copies it into a private memory, and then checks it. In this way, there is no need for context swapping; the kernel need not be invoked at all.


Isn't the semaphore also a kernel-provided mechanism, which forces both processes to synchronize via kernel entries? Also, the usage of a shared-memory communication comes not for free as one has to establish the shared memory with each communication partner, allocate buffers in the shared memory, maybe allocate control packets, acknowledge completed messages for buffer reuse and maybe unblock the sender that wants to marshal the next message. From our experience with Genode, this pays off for bulk-data transfer but not for most RPCs with just a few register words of payload.

Modern microkernels like Fiasco.OC support fast inter-process communication with a user-level accessible part of the thread control block - UTCB - with a size of about 64 register words or something more. Processes marshal their message payload into the UTCB, the kernel copies from sender to receiver UTCB, and, finally, the receiver demarshals the data out of the UTCB as needed. Performance-wise this should fit the approach you described, the time for the copy operation is bounded by UTCB size, and there's no shared-memory establishment overhead as only the kernel accesses both UTCBs.

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