{"id":153488,"date":"2006-10-01T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2006-10-01T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/msr-research-item\/deconstructing-process-isolation\/"},"modified":"2018-10-16T20:13:16","modified_gmt":"2018-10-17T03:13:16","slug":"deconstructing-process-isolation","status":"publish","type":"msr-research-item","link":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/publication\/deconstructing-process-isolation\/","title":{"rendered":"Deconstructing Process Isolation"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"asset-content\">\n<p>Most operating systems enforce process isolation through hardware protection mechanisms such as memory segmentation, page mapping, and differentiated user and kernel instructions. Singularity is a new operating system that uses software mechanisms to enforce process isolation. A software isolated process (SIP) is a process whose boundaries are established by language safety rules and enforced by static type checking. SIPs provide a low cost isolation mechanism that provides failure isolation and fast inter-process communication.To compare the performance of Singularity&#8217;s SIPs against traditional isolation techniques, we implemented an optional hardware isolation mechanism. Protection domains are hardware-enforced address spaces, which can contain one or more SIPs. Domains can either run at the kernel&#8217;s privilege level or be fully isolated from the kernel and run at the normal application privilege level. With protection domains, we can construct Singularity configurations that are similar to micro-kernel and monolithic kernel systems. We found that hardware-based isolation incurs non-trivial performance costs (up to 25\u201333%) and complicates system implementation. Software isolation has less than 5% overhead on these benchmarks.The lower run-time cost of SIPs makes their use feasible at a finer granularity than conventional processes. However, hardware isolation remains valuable as a defense-in-depth against potential failures in software isolation mechanisms. Singularity&#8217;s ability to employ hardware isolation selectively enables careful balancing of the costs and benefits of each isolation technique.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><!-- .asset-content --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Most operating systems enforce process isolation through hardware protection mechanisms such as memory segmentation, page mapping, and differentiated user and kernel instructions. Singularity is a new operating system that uses software mechanisms to enforce process isolation. A software isolated process (SIP) is a process whose boundaries are established by language safety rules and enforced by [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"template":"","meta":{"msr-url-field":"","msr-podcast-episode":"","msrModifiedDate":"","msrModifiedDateEnabled":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"_classifai_error":"","msr-author-ordering":null,"msr_publishername":"ACM","msr_publisher_other":"","msr_booktitle":"","msr_chapter":"","msr_edition":"ACM SIGPLAN Workshop on Memory Systems Performance and Correctness","msr_editors":"","msr_how_published":"","msr_isbn":"","msr_issue":"","msr_journal":"","msr_number":"","msr_organization":"","msr_pages_string":"1-10","msr_page_range_start":"","msr_page_range_end":"","msr_series":"","msr_volume":"","msr_copyright":"","msr_conference_name":"ACM SIGPLAN Workshop on Memory Systems Performance and 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