This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
Abstraction Layers
We have used the term abstraction and should spend a moment talking about what it means with regard to kernel design. When we consider the task of resource management, we must determine the level of control we wish to implement in our management scheme. One of the tricks of the trade involves grouping individual components of a system resource into uniform-sized blocks, chunks, extents, pages, and so on. The availability of the resource is then tracked at the level of these granular units, thus reducing the complexity of kernel data structures.
A classic case is that of memory management. A computer's physical RAM consists of circuits representing single bits of data storage; these are combined into sets of eight and referred to as bytes. An operating system combines bytes into words (for HP-UX, a word is 32 bits, or 4bytes; this is true for both narrow and wide kernels). The word is still a very small amount of storage space, and if the kernel needed to manage each word (by manage, we mean keep track of which words are currently being used, which are free, and who is using what), the amount of memory needed to build such structures could easily require as much space as or more than the memory being managed!
To reduce this management overhead, we make the managed unit size larger than a word. In UNIX, this is accomplished by combining sequential physical words of memory into units called page frames (on HP-UX the page frame is 4096 bytes, or 1024 words). Now the task of keeping track of what is free and what is in use becomes much simpler. This is a very basic layer of abstraction; the kernel manages page frames, which you and I know are actually blocks of words made up of bytes that are 8-bits each.
A modern UNIX kernel may use multiple layers of abstraction. Let's continue with our discussion of fundamental memory management. UNIX kernels often employ a scheme whereby a process that requires a number of page frames to hold its code is assigned an appropriately sized region in a virtual page-frame map. Virtual page frames are mapped to specific physical page frames by means of processor hardware and supporting kernel tables (discussed later in this book). This additional layer of abstraction greatly simplifies issues such as allowing two or more processes to share the same view of executable code, shared libraries, shared memory, and other process-level shared objects.
There are structures in the kernel to keep track of each element at each abstraction layer. Entities at higher layers simply point to the tracking structures at the lower layers. Lower level resource attributes are inherited by the upper abstraction layers.
Care must be taken in deciding the size of each management unit—too large and you may waste a limited resource; too small and the overhead of the tracking structures may be excessive. The kernel designer constantly walks a fine line between convenience and efficiency. As you study resource management, note the granularity of control the kernel has over its charges.