Abstract: Embodiments of the present invention provide techniques for protecting critical sections of code being executed in a lightweight kernel environment suited for use on a compute node of a parallel computing system. These techniques avoid the overhead associated with a full kernel mode implementation of a network layer, while also allowing network interrupts to be processed without corrupting shared memory state. In one embodiment, a system call may be used to disable interrupts upon entry to a routine configured to process an event associated with the interrupt.

Abstract: Embodiments of the present invention provide techniques for protecting critical sections of code being executed in a lightweight kernel environment suited for use on a compute node of a parallel computing system. These techniques avoid the overhead associated with a full kernel mode implementation of a network layer, while also allowing network interrupts to be processed without corrupting shared memory state. In one embodiment, a fast user-space function sets a flag in memory indicating that interrupts should not progress and also provides a mechanism to defer processing of the interrupt.