Abstract: Various examples described herein provide for firmware verification on a peripheral device that can couple to a computing device. Before operating firmware is executed on the peripheral device, boot firmware can execute on the peripheral device and cause the peripheral device to generate a hash of the operating firmware. The peripheral device can transmit the hash to a validator external to the peripheral device, such as a management processor. The peripheral device can receive, from the validator, a validation decision based on the transmitted hash. In response to the validation decision indicating invalidity of the operating firmware, the peripheral device can execute recovery firmware to cause the peripheral device to retrieve replacement firmware. Depending on the example, the retrieved replacement firmware may replace the operating firmware or the operating firmware may be updated based on the retrieved replacement firmware.

Abstract: A memory region has logical partitions. Each logical partition has data packages. The memory region discontiguously stores the data packages of the logical partitions. A writing process can discontiguously generate the data packages of the logical partitions. A reading process can contiguously retrieve the data packages of a selected logical partition.

Abstract: Various examples described herein provide for firmware verification on a peripheral device that can couple to a computing device. Before operating firmware is executed on the peripheral device, boot firmware can execute on the peripheral device and cause the peripheral device to generate a hash of the operating firmware. The peripheral device can transmit the hash to a validator external to the peripheral device, such as a management processor. The peripheral device can receive, from the validator, a validation decision based on the transmitted hash. In response to the validation decision indicating invalidity of the operating firmware, the peripheral device can execute recovery firmware to cause the peripheral device to retrieve replacement firmware. Depending on the example, the retrieved replacement firmware may replace the operating firmware or the operating firmware may be updated based on the retrieved replacement firmware.

Abstract: Techniques are provided for quickly reacquiring mutual exclusion locks (QRLs), such as in the case in which a single process repeatedly acquires and releases the lock and in which no other process attempts to acquire the same lock. When the first holder of a QRL first acquires the lock, it biases the lock to itself. Bias may be directed in different way or at different times in some realizations. Biasing may involve a one-time compare-and-swap instruction. Thereafter, this bias-holder can reacquire and release the lock free of atomic read-modify-write operations. If a second process attempts to acquire a QRL, then the lock may revert to a “default lock”. Any standard mutual exclusion lock may be used as the default lock. A QRL lock may be reinitialized so that it can be rebiased. Rebiasing may be valuable in the case of migratory data access patterns.