Apple Inc.

David Alexander Zarzycki

Ali T Ozer

Curtis Rothert

Mark Andrew Piccirelli

Kevin James Van Vechten

Joshua Osborne

Methods and apparatuses for proxying communication requests to services hosted on a data processing system. In one exemplary method, an open-ended configuration file is distilled to create an object tree from the configuration file. In addition, distillation creates communication handles for the services. The object tree is serialized and forwarded to a proxy agent. The proxy agent registers the service and monitors the communication handles for service requests by establishing a kernel callback. When a communication handle is readable, the proxy agent passes the communication handle to appropriate service.

Communications handles and proxy agents

An efficient mechanism for terminating applications of a data processing system is described herein. In one embodiment, in response to a request for exiting from an operating environment of a data processing system, an operating system examines an operating state associated with an application running within the operating environment, where the operating state is stored at a predetermined memory location shared between the operating system and the application. The operating system immediately terminates the application if the operating state associated with the application indicates that the application is safe for a sudden termination. Otherwise, the operating system defers terminating the application if the operating state associated with the application indicates that the application is unsafe for the sudden termination.

Efficient mechanism for terminating applications

Techniques for implementing an atomic FIFO queue and system for processing queue elements are described herein. According to one embodiment, in a first thread of execution, new data is atomically merged with existing data of an object via an atomic instruction associated with hardware that executes the first thread. An attempt is made to acquire ownership of the object (exclusive access). If successful, the object is enqueued on an atomic FIFO queue as a continuation element for further processing. Otherwise, another thread of execution is safely assumed to have acquired ownership and taken responsibility to enqueue the object. A second thread of execution processes the atomic FIFO queue and assumes ownership of the continuation elements. The second thread invokes a function member of the continuation element with a data member of the continuation element, the data member including the newly merged data. Other methods and apparatuses are also described.

Growing community of inventors

San Francisco, CA, United States of America

David Alexander Zarzycki