Date: September 15, 1994
Speaker: Steve Lucco
Efficient Software-Based Fault Isolation
Abstract: One way to provide fault isolation among cooperating software modules is to place each in its own address space. However, for tightly-coupled modules, this solution incurs prohibitive context switch overhead. In this talk, I'll present a software approach to implementing fault isolation within a single address space. Our approach has two parts. First, we load the code and data for a distrusted module into its own FAULT DOMAIN, a logically separate portion of the application's address space. Second, we modify the object code of a distrusted module to prevent it from writing or jumping to an address outside its fault domain. Both these software operations are portable and programming language independent.
Our approach poses a tradeoff relative to hardware fault isolation: substantially faster communication between fault domains, at a cost of slightly increased execution time for distrusted modules. We demonstrate that for frequently communicating modules, implementing fault isolation in software rather than hardware can substantially improve end-to-end application performance.
SDI / LCS Seminar Questions?
Karen Lindenfelser, 86716, or visit www.pdl.cmu.edu/SDI/