FlexSC: Exception-Less System Calls

Julian Brown did a presentation based on slides and a paper he found. The presentation covered a project developed at the University of Toronto. The presentation describes the performance disadvantages of the context switch from user mode to kernel mode when making a system call (which the authors call an exception). The presentation proceeds to describe a system for reducing this overhead.

Julian researched the topic ahead of time to be able to explain the technique in paper. Despite the low-level nature of the talk, the audience was very much engaged the whole time. The topic generated a lot of discussion almost from the very beginning. Julian was able to fill in many of the gaps from the presentation from his reading of the paper.

The topic is available in several forms:

• The slides
• The paper

We had 8 people attending this month. As always, we'd like to thank HostGator, LLC for providing the meeting space and food for the group.