The multikernel: a new OS architecture for scalable multicore systems

Commodity computer systems contain more and more processor cores and exhibit increasingly diverse architectural tradeoffs, including memory hierarchies, interconnects, instruction sets and variants, and IO configurations. Previous high-performance computing systems have scaled in specific cases, but the dynamic nature of modern client and server workloads, coupled with the impossibility of statically optimizing an OS for all workloads and hardware variants pose serious challenges for operating system structures. We argue that the challenge of future multicore hardware is best met by embracing the networked nature of the machine, rethinking OS architecture using ideas from distributed systems. We investigate a new OS structure, the multikernel, that treats the machine as a network of independent cores, assumes no inter-core sharing at the lowest level, and moves traditional OS functionality to a distributed system of processes that communicate via message-passing. We have implemente...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2009
• Where: SOSP
• Authors: Andrew Baumann, Paul Barham, Pierre-Évariste Dagand, Timothy L. Harris, Rebecca Isaacs, Simon Peter, Timothy Roscoe, Adrian Schüpbach, Akhilesh Singhania
• Keywords: Conventional Os, Future Multicore Hardware, Operating System, SOSP 2009, Traditional Os Functionality