May 24th, 2013

Process of Dynamic Ebb Construction / Initial Miss

The following steps occur when the first non statically constructed ebb is defined and then called:

1. Define a new ebb named enet of Ebb type Ethernet
Ebb<Ethernet> enet (ebb_manager->allocateID())
2. Bind ebb to an root construction "factory"
   ebb_manager->bind(virtio::construct_root, enet)
3. Make an ebb call
   enet->AllocateBuffer()
4. Call will miss on local translation table and end up in lrt::_trans_precall(), which in turn will call the installed miss handler.
5. The default miss handler will resolve to InitRoot::PreCall
6. The call will again miss, this time on the initial (primative) root table that contains the statically constructed ebbs. This will require a call to ebb_manager->Install()
7. If this is the first install, the ebb_manager will need to lock, allocate local data structures, copy over primative root table entries, and construct the root.
8. Finally, the constructed ebb root of enet will root->PreCall which will cache the rep into the local translation table, avoiding further misses.