Kernel Memory Access Guarding Against Corrupt Memory Locations
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Solution Overview
Problem
Cloud computing environments face significant challenges due to uncorrectable memory errors, which can lead to abrupt shutdowns of host machines and virtual machines, impacting user experiences and trust, and existing hardware and software recovery mechanisms are inadequate.
Innovation Solution
A hardware memory error tolerant software system that includes a kernel agent to detect and avoid accessing corrupt memory locations, utilizing a memory injection utility to simulate errors, analyze vulnerabilities, and implement memory poison checkers to redirect operations away from faulty memory areas.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If traditional hardware recovery mechanisms (CPU machine check architecture) are used, then hardware errors can be detected, but uncorrectable memory errors still cause host shutdowns and virtual machine terminations
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces a kernel agent as an intermediary component between the hardware error detection mechanism and the memory access operations. This kernel agent intercepts memory access requests, checks them against detected error locations, and redirects or skips accesses to corrupt memory regions, preventing crashes while maintaining system operation
Solution Approach 2:
The system performs preliminary detection of memory errors and identifies corrupt memory locations before they cause system failures. By proactively detecting and marking erroneous memory regions in advance, the system prevents uncorrectable errors from propagating and causing host shutdowns or virtual machine terminations
2Adaptability or versatility
If memory allocation to virtual machines increases to multiple terabytes, then cloud computing capacity and flexibility improve, but the impact of uncorrectable memory errors expands to affect thousands of virtual machines
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments the memory management and error handling at the virtual machine level. Each virtual machine's memory access is independently monitored and protected by the kernel agent, which can isolate and handle errors in individual virtual machines without affecting others, thus containing error propagation even as the number of virtual machines scales to thousands
Solution Approach 2:
The system implements a feedback mechanism where the kernel agent continuously monitors memory access patterns and error detection status. When errors are detected in specific memory regions, the system provides feedback to redirect future accesses away from those regions, dynamically adapting to prevent error propagation across the virtualized environment
3Reliability
If kernel agents are instantiated to check memory access requests, then memory error tolerance improves, but system processing overhead increases
Solution Approach 1:
The kernel agent implements selective checking of memory access requests rather than checking every single access. It focuses validation efforts on accesses to regions where errors have been detected or are likely to occur, allowing normal memory operations to proceed at full speed while providing enhanced protection where needed
Data Source
AI summary
Systems and methods that enable hardware memory error tolerant software systems. For instance, the system may comprise a host device that instantiates a kernel agent in response to one or more requests to access hardware memory, determines, by the kernel agent based on the received information, whether the request to access memory will cause access to a corrupt memory location, and skip an operation associated with the corrupt memory location in response to determining that the request will access a corrupt memory location. The systems may also include a system that detects software vulnerabilities to hardware memory errors.