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>"Using a microkernel as not much more than an overgrown MMU and task switching abstraction layer for someone's monolithic kernel is a cheap hack driven by the
by bogomipz 7y ago
>"Using a microkernel as not much more than an overgrown MMU and task switching abstraction layer for someone's monolithic kernel is a cheap hack driven by the needs of academic research, not how they are supposed to be."
I found this interesting. Can you or anyone else say what the context was where academic researchers have needed to do this? What problem was it solving for them in a cheap way?
- spinlok 7y agoThere is a linked article on his blog https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/tech/AcademicMicrokernels https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/tech/AcademicMicrok... that expands on this. Specifically: >the whole 'normal kernel on microkernel' idea of porting an existing OS kernel to live on top of your microkernel gives you at least the hope of creating a usable environment on your microkernel with a minimum amount of work (ie, without implementing all of a POSIX+ layer and TCP/IP networking and so on). Plus some grad student can probably get a paper out of it, which is a double win.
- bogomipz 7y agoThis is a great read. Thank you.