New Mechanism for Fast System Calls
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System calls have no place on the fast path of microsecond-scale systems. However, kernel bypass prevents the OS from controlling and supervising access to the hardware. In this paper we introduce the fastcall space, a new layer in the traditional OS architecture, that hosts fastcalls. A fastcall implements the fast path of a traditional kernel operation and can stay on the fast path, because the transition to the fastcall space is ≈× 15 faster than to the kernel space. This way the OS does not give up the control over device access, whereas the applications maintain their performance.
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