Secure control transfer in information system

Abstract

Methods and/or systems and/or apparatus for improved security in information processing systems provide secure control transfer and object-oriented programming support at an architectural level using hardware readable data structures that represent different object structures in order to securely switch context. An architectural level Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) processor allows OOP software to be directly mapped into hardware and object security can be enforced not only in software, but also in hardware. The processor performs security checks for objects and eliminates most of the software work for access checking. In some embodiments, a hardware or hardware-like (e.g., firmware) device is used for communication and access control, to compute instructions, with a mapping mechanism of access control for object-oriented computing, through operand descriptor tables to describe the access control based on the object-orientation requirements, such as private, public, package, or protected, etc. The hardware emulates an object-orientation environment, to provide object management, object-oriented memory management, etc.