research-article

Running application specific kernel code by a just-in-time compiler

Authors:

Ake Koomsin,

Yasushi ShinjoAuthors Info & Claims

PLOS '15: Proceedings of the 8th Workshop on Programming Languages and Operating Systems

Pages 15 - 20

https://doi.org/10.1145/2818302.2818305

Published: 04 October 2015 Publication History

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Abstract

Kernel scripting is a technique to run an extension code in a script language in an operating system kernel. Conventional kernel scripting has two limitations. First, it affects an entire system and only privileged users are allowed to install a new script. This prohibits developers from running their own application-specific code in the kernel. Second, its performance is not sufficient for some time-sensitive applications. In this paper, we address these problems. Our system call scripting allows developers to run their own application-specific code in the kernel without the root privilege. Our system call scripting runs with less overhead because we use a Just-In-Time (JIT) compiler. To evaluate our idea, we ported the LuaJIT compiler into the FreeBSD 10.1 x86 kernel. We modified Memcached to use system call scripting that processes multiple UDP GET requests at a time. With one worker thread and under a high-load condition, we achieved a 33% reduction in the average response time and a 44% improvement in the throughput when the response value size was small.

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Cited By

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Ott MRaffeck PSieh VSchröder-Preikschat W(2023)Towards Just-In-Time Compiling of Operating SystemsProceedings of the 12th Workshop on Programming Languages and Operating Systems10.1145/3623759.3624551(41-48)Online publication date: 23-Oct-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3623759.3624551
Shahinfar FMiano SSiracusano GBifulco RPanda AAntichi GBaumann ACrooks NSchwarzkopf M(2023)Automatic Kernel Offload Using BPFProceedings of the 19th Workshop on Hot Topics in Operating Systems10.1145/3593856.3595888(143-149)Online publication date: 22-Jun-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3593856.3595888

Index Terms

Running application specific kernel code by a just-in-time compiler
1. General and reference
  1. Cross-computing tools and techniques
    1. Performance
2. Software and its engineering

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Reviews

Reviewer: Partha Pratim Das

Kernel scripting allows users to dynamically load and execute scripts in the kernel to modify the kernel behavior according to their demands. Existing kernel scripting approaches are mostly performance-intensive and allow only privileged users to install kernel scripts, which affect the entire system. Extending the implementation by Neto et. al. [1], the authors propose system-call scripting for all users (without root permission) based on Lua [2,3] (scripting extension language) in Linux and FreeBSD systems, where the host kernel invokes the in-kernel Lua interpreter to dynamically execute user-defined kernel extension scripts in application scope only, without affecting the entire system, using specific system calls. Lua's just-in-time (JIT) compiler is modified and used to reduce runtime overhead of the interpreter. Lua uses a stack to communicate with the application it is integrated into. To implement the application-scope extension, two system calls are provided to all users. One loads the required script (written using Lua based on existing system calls) into a newly created stack at runtime and returns a file descriptor pointing to it, and the second call uses this file descriptor and accepts application arguments from the user space to run the script, after which the result is stored on the stack's top, to be used by the application. An intermediate module is provided, through which the Lua scripts access kernel memory only after proper validation, for safe execution of scripts. For performance gain, the tracing LuaJIT compiler is modified to run in kernel space as a kernel loadable lightweight module that produces optimized native code for frequently used code-paths for the interpreter to reuse. The authors evaluated the approach successfully by scripting kernel extensions for the Memcached application [4], to allow multiple transmissions of transmission control protocol/user datagram protocol (TCP/UDP) packets in one mode switch, and reported significant performance gain using the JIT compiler. The paper is well presented. The approach provides a high-level kernel programming environment and is useful for application developers with prior knowledge of Lua. Online Computing Reviews Service

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Published In

PLOS '15: Proceedings of the 8th Workshop on Programming Languages and Operating Systems

October 2015

50 pages

ISBN:9781450339421

DOI:10.1145/2818302

Program Chair:
Shan Lu
University of Chicago

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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Association for Computing Machinery

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Published: 04 October 2015

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SOSP '15

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SIGOPS

SOSP '15: ACM SIGOPS 25th Symposium on Operating Systems Principles

October 4, 2015

California, Monterey

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PLOS '15 Paper Acceptance Rate 7 of 16 submissions, 44%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 17 of 32 submissions, 53%

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SOSP '25

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sigops

ACM SIGOPS 31st Symposium on Operating Systems Principles

October 13 - 16, 2025

Seoul , Republic of Korea

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Cited By

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Ott MRaffeck PSieh VSchröder-Preikschat W(2023)Towards Just-In-Time Compiling of Operating SystemsProceedings of the 12th Workshop on Programming Languages and Operating Systems10.1145/3623759.3624551(41-48)Online publication date: 23-Oct-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3623759.3624551
Shahinfar FMiano SSiracusano GBifulco RPanda AAntichi GBaumann ACrooks NSchwarzkopf M(2023)Automatic Kernel Offload Using BPFProceedings of the 19th Workshop on Hot Topics in Operating Systems10.1145/3593856.3595888(143-149)Online publication date: 22-Jun-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3593856.3595888

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