Methods and apparatus to provide a managed runtime environment in a sequestered partition

#This disclosure relates generally to processor management and, more particularly, to methods and apparatus to provide a managed runtime environment in a sequestered partition.

#The use of new computer languages in the context of web support such as Extensible Markup Language (XML), Sun Java and Microsoft common language runtime (CLR) intermedial language, represent new types of workloads that cannot be best supported by compilers that are run on general-purpose, multiple address space (MAS) operating systems. Attempts to design specialized hardware processor cores to accelerate compilation of specific applications and maintain the confidentiality and proprietary nature of these designs are often thwarted because in order to operate with general purpose operating systems, general purpose operating system developers must be provided the details of the specialized hardware processor core. Thus, the confidential and proprietary value of such specialized hardware processor core designs is often lost. Further, the general execution environment cannot exploit non-standard instruction set architecture (ISA) extensions, different Just-in-Time (JIT) compilers, garbage collectors, and other artifacts that may be most efficiently run on specially designed hardware cores.

#One approach to address these issues has been to install specialized core processors such as co-processors developed by third-party chipmakers that can be dropped into a coherent hyper-threading (HT) socket. Such co-processors are designed to begin working gluelessly with the other processors in the system. For example, a Java+XML accelerator co-processor may be installed into one socket of a multi-processor system. Such a configuration could be used with a datacenter web server having, a general processor in one socket and a Java+XML coprocessor in another socket. However, such solutions still require the interface with general operating systems and, thus, do not fully use the optimization of a processor core design because the specialized core is limited by the general operating system.

#FIG. 1 is a block diagram of an example processor system that uses a managed runtime environment in an example sequestered partition.

#FIG. 2 is block diagram representing the processing of instructions by a general partition and the sequestered partition in the example processor system in FIG. 1.

#FIG. 3 is a flow diagram representation of an example machine readable instruction which may be executed to process specialized instructions.

#In general, methods and apparatus to provide a managed runtime environment in a sequestered partition are disclosed herein. An example processor system has a general partition having a central processing unit (CPU) to run a first operating system. An embedded partition has a second central processing unit (CPU) to run a second operating system. An inter-partition bridge is provided to exchange an instruction between the general partition and the embedded partition. The first operating system includes a managed runtime environment filter to evaluate the instruction and determine whether the embedded partition can process the instruction.

#Another example is a method of accelerating execution of an instruction. A first operating system is run to read the instruction. An inter-partition bridge is used to transmit the instruction to an embedded partition. The instruction is processed in the embedded partition with a second operating system.

#Another example is an article of manufacture storing machine readable instructions which, when executed, cause a processor system to run a first operating system to read an instruction. The instruction is transmitted via an inter-partition bridge to an embedded partition. The instruction is processed in the embedded partition with a second operating system.