Reply To: Security

I got 3 small questions.

1. Considering stacklets are only 4kb in size, services probably can’t use to large data structures on the stack. But considering argument passing happens on the belt and call stacks in the spiller, the stack pressure on the Mill is vastly reduced. I’m assuming normal applications can have larger stacks than 4kb though.

2. There are a few harware functionalities that could be useful if exposed to the programmer, like the lookups in the PLB and TLP. I’m not sure how feasible and secure this is, but could those lookup algorithms implememted in hardware be accessible to the programmer through a service/portal call? Or are they too tightly tied to their dedicated data tables?

3. Are you aware of the MIT exokernels? I think the Mill architecture lends itself beautifully to it, and the service concept even makes some of the contortions they go through to avoid or secure task switches unnecessary, like dedicated languages that results in code passed to privilged kernel driver modules.