Lightweight hardware support for protection in object-oriented systems

The paper describes ACOM (access control monitor), a hardware device developed to enforce run time protection in a persistent object-oriented system. To obtain a wide acceptance, the efficiency of these systems must be comparable to conventional language systems. One of the key issues is to exploit the efficiency of virtual memory management of contemporary processors. A careful analysis of the hardware-software trade-off leads to a simple hardware device which can efficiently support encapsulation and protection of small objects in an object-oriented systems. The main idea is to separate encapsulation and protection from address translation issues.<
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