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Date: Wed, 22 Feb 2012 23:56:27 -0500 From: Jidong Xiao <jidong.xiao@...il.com> To: Kernel development list <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org> Subject: Can we move device drivers into user-space? Hi, I am just curious. Since the concept user-space device drivers has been proposed for several years, and some related projects and research papers have demonstrated the feasibility of of moving device drivers into use space. In particular, this paper: Tolerating Malicious Device Drivers in Linux. http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/papers/sud:usenix10.pdf In this paper, existing device driver code need not to be changed, which should help the idea to be applied in practice. The advantage and disadvantage of move device drivers into use space of both obvious: Advantage: Since most of kernel bugs are caused by device drivers issues, moving device drivers into user space can reduce the impact of device driver bugs. From security perspective, the system can be more secure and robust if most device drivers are working in user space. Disadvantage: At least, existing techniques as well as the above paper showed a relatively high overhead. So is it mainly because the high overhead that prevents the user-space device drivers ideas being accepted in Linux? Regards -Jidong -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@...r.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
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