Our work solves these problems by providing an efficient, flexible, general communication interface. ASHs allow application-specific communication protocols to be dynamically yet safely downloaded into the kernel and tightly integrated with the communication system. This protocol lets us extend the range of code that we can download into the kernel. An implementation of ASHs on top of Aegis, an exokernel-based operating system, is still in progress.
Preliminary numbers show that ASHs offer substantial performance advantages.
This paper describes joint work with Dawson Engler and M. Frans Kaashoek.