Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Pavlo Lebedynskiy

Darek Josip Mihocka

Jon Robert Berry

Pedro Miguel Sequeira De Justo Teixeira

Clarence Siu Yeen Dang

James David Cleary

YongKang Zhu

Tiansheng Tan

Mehmet Iyigun

Yevgeniy Bak

Landy Wang

Ben Niu

Russell Charles Hadley

Vijay Sundaram

Theodore Maxwell Thomas

Using a common reference address when processing calls among a native ABI and a foreign ABI. Based on caller calling using a reference address, a lookup structure is used to determine whether the reference address is within a memory range storing native code (and that the callee is native) or a memory range not storing native code (and that the callee is foreign). Execution of the callee is initiated based on one of (i) when the caller is native and when the callee is foreign, calling the callee using the reference address within an emulator; (ii) when the caller is foreign and the callee is native, calling an entry thunk; (iii) when the caller is native and the callee is foreign, calling an exit thunk; or (iv) when the caller is native and the callee is native, directly calling the callee using the reference address.

Dual architecture function pointers having consistent reference addresses

A hybrid binary executable under both native processes and compatibility (e.g., emulated) processes. When the hybrid binary is loaded by a native process, the process executes a native code stream contained in the binary directly on a processor. When the hybrid binary is loaded by a compatibility process, the process executes an emulation-compatible (EC) code stream directly on a processor. When executing in a compatibility process, the EC code stream can interact with a foreign code stream that executes in an emulator. The foreign code stream can be included in the hybrid binary itself, or can be external to the hybrid binary. The hybrid binary format supports folding of code between the native code stream and the EC code stream. The hybrid binary comprises a set of memory transformations which are applied to image data obtained from the binary when the hybrid binary executes under the compatibility process.

Hybrid binaries supporting code stream folding

In a device having a memory accessed as multiple pages, two or more pages of the multiple pages having identical content are identified. While the two or more pages are being identified, other processes running in the device are allowed to use the two or more pages, including being allowed to change cache attributes of each of the two or more pages. The two or more pages are combined into a single combined page (e.g., a newly allocated page of the multiple pages), and a process page record having multiple entries pointing to the multiple pages is updated so that entries that previously pointed to one of the two or more pages instead point to the single page.

Combining memory pages having identical content

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Pavlo Lebedynskiy