Stub-code performance is becoming important

Abstract

As IPC mechanisms become faster, stub-code efficiency becomes a performance issue for local client/server RPCs and inter-component communication. Inefficient and unnecessary complex marshalling code can almost double communication costs. We have developed an experimental new IDL compiler called IDL 4 that produces near-optimal stub-code for gcc and the L4 microkernel. IDL 4 is neither portable nor adaptable but generates in most cases stub-code that is 3 times shorter (and faster) than the code generated by a commonly used portable IDL compiler. 1 Motivation Multi-server and component-based systems are promising architectural approaches to handle the ever increasing complexity of operating and application systems. Components or servers (and clients) communicate with each other through cross-domain method invocations. Such interface method invocations -- if crossing protection boundaries -- are typically implemented through interprocess communication (IPC) mechanisms offered by a ...