Cooperative kernel: online memory test platform using inter-kernel context switch and memory isolation

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a novel memory test platform that is based on the commodity operating systems such as Linux and MS Windows. The proposed memory test platform namely coKernel(cooperative Kernel) provides a facility to examine the entire physical memory, even the region occupied by the test program and operation system. To accomplish this facility, we devise several new techniques including multiple kernel instances, memory isolation, interkernel context switch and kernel hibernation. The multiple kernel instances and memory isolation make it possible to access the whole physical memory cells, while the inter-kernel context switch and kernel hibernation enables to modify memory contents as the way whatever a test program desire. Real implementation based experimental results have shown that the platform supports full memory test coverage with a reasonable overhead. For instance, the inter-kernel context switch and kernel hibernation takes less than 7 seconds on a system equipped with 32GB DRAM, which is quite small compared with the execution time of a test program.