Apple Inc.

Francesco R Dimambro

Cahya Adiansyah Masputra

Sandeep Nair

Wei Shen

Eric Tsz Leung Cheng

Vidhi Goel

Methods and apparatuses for cross-layer processing. In some embodiments, kernel processes are executed at a higher privilege and priority than user space processes, thus cross-layer communication that spans both kernel and user space may introduce system vulnerabilities and/or consume limited resources in an undesirable manner. Unlike kernel space networking architectures that have to accommodate generic use cases, user space networking architectures are application specific, run in their own memory allocations, and can be terminated without affecting other user space applicationsand/or kernel space operation. Various aspects described herein provide application specific, non-generic functionality without kernel assistance. Exemplary embodiments for buffer cloning, packet aggregation and 'just in time' transformations, are illustrative of the broader concepts enabled by the present disclosure.

Methods and apparatuses for cross-layer processing

Techniques are provided for managing a user space protocol stack are disclosed herein. A nexus in a kernel space can receive a packet from a packet pool, and extract information from the packet to generate a flow key indicating a particular flow for the packet. The nexus can further look up the flow key in a flow table to determine whether there is an existing flow key stored in the flow table matching the flow key of the packet, and store the packet into a batch of packets of the existing flow when the existing flow key matches the flow key of the packet. When a release condition being met, the nexus can release the batch of packets of the existing flow to a user space protocol stack within a user space application through a channel communicatively coupled to the nexus and the user space protocol stack.

Growing community of inventors

Cupertino, CA, United States of America

Francesco R Dimambro