Efficient dynamic services for native runtime environments
Jonathan Emdin Cook, Abdulmalik Al‐Gahmi · 2008
Native runtime environments have long been expected to be lean, efficient platforms for running binary applications at the maximum performance possible. Thus, research and practice in creating more feature-rich environments has progressed mostly in interpreted environments, unfortunately leaving native environments overlooked. This work proposes a new model for native runtime environments that is based on the dynamic services they provide to running application programs. The underlying thesis of this work is that under this new model advanced dynamic services can be efficiently provided to running application programs. An environment that conforms to such a model is called a Service-Based Run-Time (SBRT) environment. A prototype SBRT environment, called pSBRT, is implemented based on the present runtime environment represented by the current dynamic linker, and is comprised of four core components: the dynamic linker, the repository, the event manager, and the dynamic instrumentor. Example key dynamic services from active research areas such as metadata, runtime program monitoring, dynamic program composition, and security, are built and deployed into pSBRT . The thesis is validated with experimental results showing that pSBRT meets the performance goals set to demonstrate that an SBRT environment can be acceptably efficient when compared with current native environments. This work can pave the way for new thinking about native runtime environments, and for the building and deployment of more extensive services in them.