John D Kubiatowicz

US Patent:

20080222397, Sep 11, 2008

Filed:

Mar 10, 2008

Appl. No.:

12/045542

Inventors:

Daniel Shawcross Wilkerson - Berkeley CA, US
John Kubiatowicz - Pleasant Hill CA, US

International Classification:

G06F 9/30

US Classification:

712220, 712E09016

Abstract:

In accordance with one embodiment, additions to the standard computer microprocessor architecture hardware are disclosed comprising novel page table entry fields , special registers , instructions for modifying these fields and registers , and hardware-implemented runtime checks and operations involving these fields and registers. More specifically, in the above embodiment of a Hard Object system, there is additional meta-data in each page table entry beyond what it commonly holds, and each time a data load or store is issued from the CPU, and the virtual address translated to the physical address , the Hard Object system uses its additional PTE meta-data to perform memory access checks additional to those done in current systems. Together with changes to software, these access checks can be arranged carefully to provide more fine-grain access control for data than do current systems.