Using a Low-Level Virtual Machine to Improve Dynamic Aspect Support in Operating System Kernels

Current implementations of software providing dynamic aspect functionality in operating system (OS) kernels are quite restricted in the possible joinpoint types for native code they are able to support. Most of the projects implementing advice for native code use basic technologies adopted from instrumentation methods which allow to provide before, after and around joinpoints for functions. More elaborate joinpoints, however, are not available since support for monitoring native code execution in current CPUs is very restricted without extensive extensions of the compiler toolchain. To realize improved ways of aspect activation in OS kernels, we present an architecture that provides an efficient low-level virtual machine running on top of a microkernel system in cooperation with an aspect deployment service to provide novel ways of aspect activation in kernel environments.