Patent ID: 8214629
Filing Date: 2012-07-03
Classification: G06F

Abstract:
1. A computer system with a secure instantly-available application comprising: a processor coupled to a virtual memory system with a write-protection mechanism; wherein the virtual memory system comprises a physical memory region and a virtual memory region, wherein the physical memory region has a non-volatile main memory with write-protected region, wherein the write-protected mechanism prevents additional writes to the write-protected region after initial manufacture and/or installation, an user application code is stored into the write-protected region of the non-volatile main memory region before power-up by an user, wherein the user applications code in the write-protected non-volatile main memory region is write- protected by hard-coding at least one of plurality of bits in a page-table mapping entries; wherein a mapping entry is selected from a group of reference bits, replacement information bits, and read-write-execute (RWE) bits, wherein the read-write-execute bits indicate a permissions to read, write and execute the user application code in a selected page; and an application configuration and a session data for each of the user application code in non-volatile write protected main memory, and a secure read-write access to the write protected region, the configuration data specifies selected options that control the execution of each of the user application code and the session data specifies information about previous completed or suspended executions of each of the user application code; wherein the secure read-write access to the write protected region selectively permits the processor to write to the write-protected non-volatile main memory region which contains the application configuration and the session data; wherein the user application code is made secure by preventing writes to the non-volatile write protected region in which the user application code is residing; a malicious code cannot be transferred to the non-volatile write protected main memory region which contains the user application code by the write-protection mechanism and the user application code is directly executed from the non-volatile write-protected region; wherein the user application code is not transferred from a disk to the non-volatile main memory region at power-up thereby resulting in an instantly-available application.