software handling a cell fails some of the communication buffers are still owned by the failing software component s generally all cell specific resources e g buffers contexts data structures interrupts threads pending dmas etc may be affected by a cell failure however the way resources are managed is specific to the application architecture and to the behavior of the applicable operating system such as linux for example there may be a distinction between user space resources and kernel space resources as well as between private pools of resources and shared pools of resources likewise there may be a distinction between the allocation from a central entity such as the callp module 126 or the oa amp m module 124 as compared to allocation from a cell specific entity such as a layer 2 scheduler process the memory management subsystem of an operating system such as linux manages several virtual memory addressing spaces one address space for each process and one address space for the kernel when a process terminates the operating system automatically releases all resources allocated from the process address space consequently there is no need for an explicit cleanup of resources that are part of the process address space the cell specific resources that are allocated on behalf of a failing cell from the kernel address space should be cleaned up by the platform software driver e g the caldpaadriver 212 it should be noted that the termination of a process does not automatically clean up the cell resources from kernel modules the term u201c clean up u201d as used herein refers not only to memory buffers in kernel space but to many other kernel resources and activities specific to a.