Patent ID: 8074274

Claim:
A method comprising: receiving a request in an operating system-managed sequencer (OMS) of a hardware processor from a user-level agent for programming of a user-level privilege for at least one architectural hardware resource of an application-managed sequencer (AMS) of the processor including next instruction pointer logic coupled to the OMS that is not visible to the operating system (OS) and which operates at a lower privilege level than the OMS; programming the user-level privilege for the at least one architectural hardware resource of the AMS using the OMS to write a value indicative of a selected privilege level to a sequencer privilege descriptor (SPD) associated with the AMS, wherein the AMS is to directly control access at the user-level to the at least one architectural hardware resource; and converting a function call into a user-level shred, and sending the user-level shred by the OMS to the AMS, wherein the selected privilege level of the AMS is programmed to be more constrained than the OMS.