MeSHwA: The case for a Memory-Safe Software and Hardware Architecture for Serverless Computing

TL;DR

This paper advocates for a memory-safe architecture in serverless computing to improve security, efficiency, and support for legacy applications, exploring hardware and software design options.

Contribution

It proposes a novel architecture, MeSHwA, integrating memory safety into serverless environments, and analyzes hardware-software co-design for improved security and efficiency.

Findings

Memory-safe architectures can enhance security and efficiency.

Hardware implications are critical for implementing memory-safe serverless systems.

The proposed design supports legacy and memory-unsafe applications.

Abstract

Motivated by developer productivity, serverless computing, and microservices have become the de facto development model in the cloud. Microservices decompose monolithic applications into separate functional units deployed individually. This deployment model, however, costs CSPs a large infrastructure tax of more than 25%. To overcome these limitations, CSPs shift workloads to Infrastructure Processing Units (IPUs) like Amazon's Nitro or, complementary, innovate by building on memory-safe languages and novel software abstractions. Based on these trends, we hypothesize a \arch providing a general-purpose runtime environment to specialize functionality when needed and strongly isolate components. To achieve this goal, we investigate building a single address space OS or a multi-application library OS, possible hardware implications, and demonstrate their capabilities, drawbacks and requirements. The goal is to bring the advantages to all application workloads including legacy and memory-unsafe applications, and analyze how hardware may improve the efficiency and security.