Sharing operating system sub-processes across tasks

Abstract

An operating system permits sharing of a sub-process (or process unit) across multiple processes (or tasks). Each shared sub-process has its own context. The sharing is enabled by tracking when a process invokes a sub-process. When a process invokes a sub-process, the process is designated as a parent process of the child sub-process. The invoked sub-process may require use of process level variable data. To enable storage of the process level variable data for each calling process, the variable data is stored in memory using a base address and a fixed offset. Although the based address may vary from process to process, the fixed offset remains the same across processes.

Description

technical field [0001] The present invention relates to operating systems. More specifically, the invention relates to memory management by an operating system. Background technique [0002] Typically, applications share common functions. For example, both a voice recorder application and a voice communication application require voice codec functions. One way to allow two applications to be able to use the same function is to use a shared library. [0003] A shared library is a collection of subroutines shared among multiple programs. Multiple programs can run a shared library concurrently, and thus a shared library will provide certain advantages to the program designer. However, some operating systems require that shared libraries reside in internal memory at all times. In many computing systems, internal memory is a limited resource. Limited resources (eg, internal memory) become even more limited when using shared libraries. [0004] Shared libraries need to be r...

AI Technical Summary

Problems solved by technology

[0006] The act of declaring the same function in each application and overlapping the functions has drawbacks such as maintenance and wasted memory

For example, maintaining a memory map is difficult because care needs to be taken to ensure that any changes (such as adding a new data variable to a function) are reflected on all functions

Removing the memory map of a function from an application that no longer needs it is error-prone

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