Article

Language support for fast and reliable message-based communication in singularity OS

Authors:

Manuel Fähndrich,

Chris Hawblitzel,

James R. Larus,

Steven LeviAuthors Info & Claims

EuroSys '06: Proceedings of the 1st ACM SIGOPS/EuroSys European Conference on Computer Systems 2006

Pages 177 - 190

https://doi.org/10.1145/1217935.1217953

Published: 18 April 2006 Publication History

Abstract

Message-based communication offers the potential benefits of providing stronger specification and cleaner separation between components. Compared with shared-memory interactions, message passing has the potential disadvantages of more expensive data exchange (no direct sharing) and more complicated programming.In this paper we report on the language, verification, and run-time system features that make messages practical as the sole means of communication between processes in the Singularity operating system. We show that using advanced programming language and verification techniques, it is possible to provide and enforce strong system-wide invariants that enable efficient communication and low-overhead software-based process isolation. Furthermore, specifications on communication channels help in detecting programmer mistakes early---namely at compile-time---thereby reducing the difficulty of the message-based programming model.The paper describes our communication invariants, the language and verification features that support them, as well as implementation details of the infrastructure. A number of benchmarks show the competitiveness of this approach.

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Index Terms

Language support for fast and reliable message-based communication in singularity OS
1. Software and its engineering
  1. Software notations and tools
    1. General programming languages
      1. Language features
  2. Software organization and properties
    1. Contextual software domains
      1. Operating systems
        Communications management

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Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

EuroSys '06: Proceedings of the 1st ACM SIGOPS/EuroSys European Conference on Computer Systems 2006

April 2006

420 pages

ISBN:1595933220

DOI:10.1145/1217935

Conference Chair:
Yolande Berbers
K. U. Leuven, Belgium
,
Program Chair:
Willy Zwaenepoel
EPFL

ACM SIGOPS Operating Systems Review Volume 40, Issue 4
Proceedings of the 2006 EuroSys conference
October 2006
383 pages
ISSN:0163-5980
DOI:10.1145/1218063
Issue’s Table of Contents

Copyright © 2006 Authors.

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SIGOPS: ACM Special Interest Group on Operating Systems

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

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Published: 18 April 2006

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EUROSYS06: Eurosys 2006 Conference

April 18 - 21, 2006

Leuven, Belgium

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Overall Acceptance Rate 241 of 1,308 submissions, 18%

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https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3678890.3678907
Castes CGhosn A(2023)Dynamic Linkers Are the Narrow Waist of Operating SystemsProceedings of the 12th Workshop on Programming Languages and Operating Systems10.1145/3623759.3624548(26-33)Online publication date: 23-Oct-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3623759.3624548
Narayan SGarfinkel TTaram MRudek JMoghimi DJohnson EFallin CVahldiek-Oberwagner ALeMay MSahita RTullsen DStefan DAamodt TJerger NSwift M(2023)Going beyond the Limits of SFI: Flexible and Secure Hardware-Assisted In-Process Isolation with HFIProceedings of the 28th ACM International Conference on Architectural Support for Programming Languages and Operating Systems, Volume 310.1145/3582016.3582023(266-281)Online publication date: 25-Mar-2023
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Stutz FZufferey D(2022)Comparing Channel Restrictions of Communicating State Machines, High-level Message Sequence Charts, and Multiparty Session TypesElectronic Proceedings in Theoretical Computer Science10.4204/EPTCS.370.13370(194-212)Online publication date: 20-Sep-2022
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