Service Extrusion in General Purpose Kernel

Abstract

General-purpose kernels sometimes fail to provide specialized services that may be required by applications, for example real-time capabilities, low-latency communication, or specialized device access capabilities. Addressing this with the use of specialized kernels lose the generality that one has come to expect from general purpose kernel. This thesis proposes a solution that combines the general-purpose and specialized kernels, to enable services from both sides with performance isolation, in a fashion that is transparent to both programmer and user. The application is provided direct hardware access, and at the same time still has access to Linux system calls without crossing the privilege layer.