Hardware/software cooperation in the iAPX-432

  • Authors:

  • Justin Rattner

  • Affiliations:

  • Intel Corporation, Aloha, Oregon

  • Venue:
  • ASPLOS I Proceedings of the first international symposium on Architectural support for programming languages and operating systems
  • Year:
  • 1982

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Abstract

The Intel iAPX-432 is an object-based microcomputer system with a unified approach to the design and use of its architecture, operating system, and primary programming language. The concrete architecture of the 432 incorporates hardware support for data abstraction, small protection domains, and language-oriented run-time environments. It also uses its object-orientation to provide hardware support for dynamic heap storage management, interprocess communication, and processor dispatching. We begin with an overview of the 432 architecture so readers unfamiliar with its basic concepts will be able to follow the succeeding discussion without the need to consult the references. Following that, we introduce the various forms of hardware/software cooperation and the criteria by which a function or service is selected for migration. This is followed by several of the more interesting examples of hardware/software cooperation in the 432. A comparison of cooperation in the 432 with several contemporary machines and discussions of development issues, past and future, complete the paper.