Methods and/or systems and/or apparatus for improved security in
information processing systems provide secure control transfer and
object-oriented programming support at an architectural level using
hardware readable data structures that represent different object
structures in order to securely switch context. An architectural level
Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) processor allows OOP software to be
directly mapped into hardware and object security can be enforced not
only in software, but also in hardware. The processor performs security
checks for objects and eliminates most of the software work for access
checking. In some embodiments, a hardware or hardware-like (e.g.,
firmware) device is used for communication and access control, to compute
instructions, with a mapping mechanism of access control for
object-oriented computing, through operand descriptor tables to describe
the access control based on the object-orientation requirements, such as
private, public, package, or protected, etc. The hardware emulates an
object-orientation environment, to provide object management,
object-oriented memory management, etc.