CAREER: Improving the Quality and Performance of Device Drivers

设备驱动程序是现代操作系统复杂性、不可靠性和成本的主要来源。NSF职业研究项目的目标是通过(1)降低设备驱动程序实现的复杂性和成本，(2)提高设备驱动程序的容错能力，以及(3)提高设备驱动程序在现代硬件和软件架构上的性能，来改进设备驱动程序。鉴于现有驱动程序的数量庞大，本研究试图开发系统和工具来改进传统驱动程序代码，以实现简单性和容错。首先，它正在开发简化驱动程序开发的工具，方法是将驱动程序分解为对性能敏感但在内核中执行的一小部分，以及在用户模式下执行的一大部分。其次，它开发了一些工具，通过识别依赖于正确设备行为的代码，然后插入故障检测和恢复代码，自动提高驱动程序对设备故障的容忍度。虽然旧代码很重要，但最新的技术为新的驱动程序体系结构开辟了道路。多核处理器、虚拟机监视器和并发系统编程语言都会改变驱动程序执行的平台。这项研究旨在通过开发一种新的驱动程序体系结构来提高虚拟化多核处理器的性能，该体系结构将客户操作系统内核从I/O路径中移除。该项目的教育重点是用现代的、动手操作的系统编程组件来增强当今的系统课程，通过成功的迁移计划来改善扩展，并增强学生的技术交流技能。

Device drivers are a major source of complexity, unreliability, and cost for modern operating systems. The objective of this NSF CAREER research project is to improve device drivers by (1) reducing the complexity and cost of implementing device drivers, (2) improving the fault tolerance of device drivers, and (3) improving the performance of device drivers on modern hardware and software architectures.Given the large body of existing drivers, this research seeks to develop systems and tools that improve legacy driver code for simplicity and fault tolerance. First, it is creating tools that simplify driver development by factoring drivers into a performance sensitive but small portion that executes in the kernel and a large portion that executes in user mode. Second, it develops tools that automatically improve driver tolerance of device failures by identifying code that depends on correct device behavior and then inserting failure detection and recovery code.While legacy code is important, recent technologies open the path for new driver architectures. Many-core processors, virtual machines monitors, and languages for concurrent systems programming all change the platform upon which drivers execute. This research seeks to improve performance on virtualized many-core processors by developing a new driver architecture that removes the guest OS kernel from the I/O path.The educational focus of the project is to augment today's systems curricula with a modern, hands-on systems programming component, to improve outreach through successful transfer programs, and to enhance the skills of students in technical communication.