Intel Corporation

Enrico Perla

David M Durham

Ravi L Sahita

Vedvyas Shanbhogue

Raanan Sade

Michael Lemay

Ron Gabor

Igor Yanover

Deepak K Gupta

Tomer Stark

Willem Pinckaers

Joseph Nuzman

Systems, methods, and apparatuses relating to circuitry to implement individually revocable capabilities for enforcing temporal memory safety are described. In one embodiment, a hardware processor comprises an execution unit to execute an instruction to request access to a block of memory through a pointer to the block of memory, and a memory controller circuit to allow access to the block of memory when an allocated object tag in the pointer is validated with an allocated object tag in an entry of a capability table in memory that is indexed by an index value in the pointer, wherein the memory controller circuit is to clear the allocated object tag in the capability table when a corresponding object is deallocated.

Hardware apparatuses, methods, and systems for individually revocable capabilities for enforcing temporal memory safety

An apparatus and method for tagged memory management. For example, one embodiment of a processor comprises: execution circuitry to execute instructions and process data, at least one instruction to generate a system memory access request having a first address pointer; and address translation circuitry to determine whether to translate the first address pointer with or without metadata processing, wherein if the first address pointer is to be translated with metadata processing, the address translation circuitry to: perform a lookup in a memory metadata table to identify a memory metadata value, determine a pointer metadata value associated with the first address pointer, and compare the memory metadata value with the pointer metadata value, the comparison to generate a validation of the memory access request or a fault condition, wherein if the comparison results in a validation of the memory access request, then accessing a set of one or more address translation tables to translate the first address pointer to a first physical address and to return the first physical address responsive to the memory access request.

Memory tagging apparatus and method

An apparatus and method for tagged memory management, an embodiment including execution circuitry to generate a system memory access request having a first address pointer and address translation circuitry to determine whether to translate the first address pointer with metadata processing. The address translation circuitry is to access address translation tables to translate the first address pointer to a first physical address, perform a lookup in a memory metadata table to identify a memory metadata value associated with a physical address range including the first physical address, determine a pointer metadata value associated with the first address pointer, and compare the memory metadata value with the pointer metadata value; and when the comparison results in a validation of the memory access request, then return the first physical address.

Memory tagging metadata manipulation

Growing community of inventors

Centallo, Italy

Enrico Perla