Reliable device drivers require well-defined protocols
Authors
Leonid Ryzhyk, Timothy Bourke and Ihor Kuz
School of Computer Science and Engineering
University of New South Wales
Sydney 2052 Australia
NICTA, Sydney,
Australia
Abstract
Current operating systems lack well-defined protocols for interaction with device drivers. We argue that this hinders the development of reliable drivers and thereby undermines overall system stability. We present an approach to specify driver protocols using a formalism based on state machines. We show that it can simplify device programming, facilitate static analysis of drivers against protocol specifications, and enable detection of incorrect behaviours at runtime.
BibTeX Entry
@inproceedings{Ryzhyk_BK_07,
title = {Reliable Device Drivers Require Well-Defined Protocols},
booktitle = {Proceedings of the 3rd Workshop on Hot Topics in System Dependability},
author = {Leonid Ryzhyk and Timothy Bourke and Ihor Kuz},
year = {2007},
month = {Jun},
address = {Edinburgh, UK}
}