Service without servers [operating system architecture]
Maeda, C.; Bershad, B.N.
Workstation Operating Systems, 1993. Proceedings., Fourth Workshop on
Volume , Issue , 14-15 Oct 1993 Page(s):170 - 176
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/WWOS.1993.348153
Summary:We propose a new style of operating system architecture
appropriate for microkernel-based operating systems: services are
implemented as a combination of shared libraries and dedicated server
processes. Shared libraries implement performance critical portions of
each system service, while dedicated servers implement the parts of each
service that do not require high performance or that are difficult to
implement in an application. Dedicated servers might be used, for
example, to manage shared state that must persist across process
lifetimes or to implement high-level abstractions that are difficult or
impossible to provide in a library. Our initial experiments show that
this approach to operating system structure can yield performance that
is comparable to monolithic kernel systems while retaining all the
modularity advantages that led industry to adopt microkernel technology
in the first place. Since services reside in libraries, an application
is free to use the library that is most appropriate. This approach can
even yield better performance than monolithic kernel systems by allowing
the shared libraries to be closely coupled with the applications,
thereby exploiting application-specific knowledge in policy decisions
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