Descriptor-Based Object-Aware Memory Systems: A Comprehensive Review
Dong Tong

TL;DR
This paper reviews descriptor-based object-aware memory systems, highlighting their role in enhancing security and efficiency by propagating high-level object semantics across hardware and software interfaces.
Contribution
It provides a comprehensive survey, introduces a taxonomy of addressing modes, and re-examines the CentroID model to advance understanding of object-aware memory architectures.
Findings
Addresses memory protection and management challenges
Introduces a taxonomy of descriptor addressing modes
Re-examines the CentroID model as a case study
Abstract
The security and efficiency of modern computing systems are fundamentally undermined by the absence of a native architectural mechanism to propagate high-level program semantics, such as object identity, bounds, and lifetime, across the hardware/software interface. This paper presents a comprehensive survey of the architectural paradigm designed to bridge this semantic gap: descriptor-based, object-aware memory systems. By elevating the descriptor to a first-class architectural abstraction, this paradigm enables hardware to dynamically acquire and enforce the rich semantics of software-defined objects. This survey systematically charts the evolution and current landscape of this approach. We establish the foundational concepts of memory objects and descriptors and introduce a novel taxonomy of descriptor addressing modes, providing a structured framework for analyzing and comparing…
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Taxonomy
TopicsSecurity and Verification in Computing · Parallel Computing and Optimization Techniques · Real-Time Systems Scheduling
