Isolation of user-mode device drivers

Abstract

A host process for use in a user-mode device driver architecture is provided by the subject invention. The architecture includes a reflector, a driver manager and the host process which hosts and isolates one or more user-mode device driver(s). The user-mode device driver runs in the user-mode (UM) environment and has access to various UM services. The reflector resides in “kernel memory” (e.g., memory/resource(s) available to operating system) while the driver manager, host process and user mode device driver(s) are located in user space (e.g., memory/resource(s) available to user application(s)). The host process can include a host runtime component and a framework component. The host runtime component is responsible for building a driver stack object, and, locating/loading object(s) of a framework component. The host runtime component further includes a message handler that facilitates communication with the reflector and routes information to components of the host process.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.