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Hardware and software support for efficient exception handling

Authors:

Chandramohan A. Thekkath,

Henry M. LevyAuthors Info & Claims

ASPLOS VI: Proceedings of the sixth international conference on Architectural support for programming languages and operating systems

Pages 110 - 119

https://doi.org/10.1145/195473.195515

Published: 01 November 1994 Publication History

Abstract

Program-synchronous exceptions, for example, breakpoints, watchpoints, illegal opcodes, and memory access violations, provide information about exceptional conditions, interrupting the program and vectoring to an operating system handler. Over the last decade, however, programs and run-time systems have increasingly employed these mechanisms as a performance optimization to detect normal and expected conditions. Unfortunately, current architecture and operating system structures are designed for exceptional or erroneous conditions, where performance is of secondary importance, rather than normal conditions. Consequently, this has limited the practicality of such hardware-based detection mechanisms.

We propose both hardware and software structures that permit efficient handling of synchronous exceptions by user-level code. We demonstrate a software implementation that reduces exception-delivery cost by an order-of-magnitude on current RISC processors, and show the performance benefits of that mechanism for several example applications.

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Hardware and software support for efficient exception handling

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Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

ASPLOS VI: Proceedings of the sixth international conference on Architectural support for programming languages and operating systems

November 1994

341 pages

ISBN:0897916603

DOI:10.1145/195473

Chairmen:
Forest Baskett
Silicon Graphics
,
Douglas Clark
Princeton Univ.

ACM SIGPLAN Notices Volume 29, Issue 11
Nov. 1994
323 pages
ISSN:0362-1340
EISSN:1558-1160
DOI:10.1145/195470
Editor:
Richard L. Wexelblat
Washington D.C.
Issue’s Table of Contents
ACM SIGOPS Operating Systems Review Volume 28, Issue 5
Dec. 1994
323 pages
ISSN:0163-5980
DOI:10.1145/381792
Chairman:
Henry M. Levy
Univ. of Washington, Seattle
Issue’s Table of Contents

Copyright © 1994 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Published: 01 November 1994

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ASPLOS94: 6th Conference on Architectural Support of Programming Languages & Operating Systems

October 5 - 7, 1994

California, San Jose, USA

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https://doi.org/10.1109/MASCOTS.2018.00041
Nelson LSigurbjarnarson HZhang KJohnson DBornholt JTorlak EWang X(2017)HyperkernelProceedings of the 26th Symposium on Operating Systems Principles10.1145/3132747.3132748(252-269)Online publication date: 14-Oct-2017
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3132747.3132748
Kong JAciicmez OSeifert JZhou H(2013)Architecting against Software Cache-Based Side-Channel AttacksIEEE Transactions on Computers10.1109/TC.2012.7862:7(1276-1288)Online publication date: 1-Jul-2013
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/TC.2012.78
Vegh JVasarhelyi JTuran JDrotos D(2013)The von Neumann computer model on the mirror of new technologiesProceedings of the 14th International Carpathian Control Conference (ICCC)10.1109/CarpathianCC.2013.6560579(411-416)Online publication date: May-2013
https://doi.org/10.1109/CarpathianCC.2013.6560579
Kong JAciicmez OSeifert JHuiyang Zhou (2009)Hardware-software integrated approaches to defend against software cache-based side channel attacks2009 IEEE 15th International Symposium on High Performance Computer Architecture10.1109/HPCA.2009.4798277(393-404)Online publication date: Feb-2009
https://doi.org/10.1109/HPCA.2009.4798277
Wong HBracy ASchuchman EAamodt TCollins JWang PChinya GGroen AJiang HWang HMoshovos ATarditi DOlukotun K(2008)PangaeaProceedings of the 17th international conference on Parallel architectures and compilation techniques10.1145/1454115.1454125(52-61)Online publication date: 25-Oct-2008
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David FCarlyle JChan ERaila DCampbell R(2006)Exception handling in the choices operating systemAdvanced Topics in Exception Handling Techniques10.5555/2124243.2124248(42-61)Online publication date: 1-Jun-2006
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Corliss MLewis ERoth A(2005)Low-Overhead Interactive Debugging via Dynamic Instrumentation with DISEProceedings of the 11th International Symposium on High-Performance Computer Architecture10.1109/HPCA.2005.18(303-314)Online publication date: 12-Feb-2005
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