Exokernel: An Operating System Architecture for Application-Level Resource Management 论文总结

Exokernel: An Operating System Architecture for Application-Level Resource Management 论文总结

Paper Title

Dawson R. Engler, M. Frans Kaashoek, and James O’Toole Jr., “Exokernel: An Operating System Architecture for Application-Level Resource Management”, Proc. of the 15th Symposium on Operating Systems Principles, December 1996.

Summary

The paper proposes and. Implements a new OS architecture, exokernel. In Introduction, the paper discusses the weakness of traditional OS architectures. Traditional OSs provide high-level abstraction but limit the performance, flexibility and functionality of applications. In contrast, an exokernel aims to provide application-level management of physical resources. It separates protection from management. It exports hardware resources rather than emulating them and makes sure the security by employing three techniques: secure bindings, visible resource revocation, abort protocol. As experiments, the authors implement a prototype exokernel system including an exokernel (Aegis) and an untrusted library operating system (ExOS). The experimental results show the effectiveness and the efficiency of the exokernel. A strength of the proposed work is that the exokernel grants the applications more control over hardware resource, such as designing special libraries, which simplifies the interface between hardware and software. According to the paper, the speed and the functionality can be improved. However, as far as I know, the system has not been commercialized until now. I think the flaws of the exokernel includes: 1) It requires application developers to develop libraries, which is hard and time-consuming. For most applications, they can be successfully developed based on traditional OS systems and have no requirements for special functions. 2) The unified standard of interfaces has not been formulated, which increases the complexity and confusion in library and software development.

Mengxia
2020.8