Re: Arbitrary Sandbox

[Niklas Holsti <niklas.holsti@tidorum.invalid>]

On 12-02-18 20:55 , Robert A Duff wrote:
> "Dmitry A. Kazakov"<mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de>  writes:
>
>> I wonder what kind of architecture could require a safe implementation of
>> Ada, e.g. when private parts of packages and protected objects would be
>> mapped onto the memory physically inaccessible from public contexts.

  ...

> Why do work at run time that can be done at compile time?
> Implementing things in hardware doesn't magically make
> them free.
>
> Putting high-level support for higher-level languages in hardware
> has been tried a number of times, and it's always been a bad idea.

For some critical systems, having checks at more than one level is good.

I seem to remember that the Burroughs mainframe computers had rather 
poor hardware-level protections. A buggy or malicious compiler could 
generate code that had harmful effects that were not restricted to the 
user running the code, if I remember correctly. A consequence was that 
an ordinary user was not allowed to create a compiler; special 
privileges were required to label a program as a "compiler" and thus let 
it generate executable code.

I agree with Bob that high-level things like visibility do not benefit 
from hardware support. But I wish hardware could detect erroneous 
executions of Ada programs.

-- 
Niklas Holsti
Tidorum Ltd
niklas holsti tidorum fi
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