Fbufs: a high-bandwidth cross-domain transfer facility

Abstract

We have designed and implemented a new operating system facility for I/O buffer management and data transferacross protection domain boundaries on shared memory machines. This facility, called fast buffers (fbufs), combines virtual page remapping with shared virtual memory, and exploits locality in I/O traffic to achieve high throughput without compromising protection, security, or modularity. goal is to help deliver the high bandwidth afforded by emerging high-speed networks to user-level processes, both in monolithic and microkernel-based operating systems.This paper outlines the requirements for a cross-domain transfer facility, describes the design of the fbuf mechanism that meets these requirements, and experimentally quantifies the impact of fbufs on network performance.