3 ms·

I disagree, these are VERY old papers (~30 years old) of comparisons containing very little data from what I can see at a quick glance. I saw a talk a couple o

I disagree, these are VERY old papers (~30 years old) of comparisons containing very little data from what I can see at a quick glance. I saw a talk a couple of years ago by Tanenbaum where he said he would be ok with Minix being 20% slower than a monolithic kernel like Linux, indicating that it was currently slower than that. Granted, Minix has not seen the type of optimizations that popular monolithic kernel has due to lack of manpower. So, I really look forward to seeing benchmarks made between monolithic kernels and new micro kernels like Google's Zircon, and Redox once they've had sufficient time to mature.

naasking 7y ago
> Tanenbaum where he said he would be ok with Minix being 20% slower than a monolithic kernel like Linux, indicating that it was currently slower than that. It doesn't indicate anything of the sort. He was making a comment that the reliability and security benefits of microkernels are simply more important than performance in this mind.
gnufx 7y ago
They may be old, but what major advances in monolithic kernels have there been to invalidate them now? There seem to have been significant advances in microkernels. (I was glad to have been using fast microkernel-ish systems daily in the 1980s, and not VAX/VMS.)
- BurningCycles 7y ago
  >but what major advances in monolithic kernels have there been to invalidate them now? What are the significant advances in micro kernels that does not apply to monolithic kernels ? Also they are not only VERY old, they seem intentionally vague when it comes to actual data about the systems they are comparing against. In short, I welcome the new micro kernels so that we can see a comparison between modern monolithic and modern micro kernels and actually get a good representation of what the performance difference is. Because if not for performance, there is no reason not to use a micro kernel.
  - gnufx 7y ago
    The L4 work is usually quoted for relatively recent advances. Presumably monolithic kernels don't benefit from performance work that's specific to micro-kernel message passing, if performance was all that mattered. I don't remember the OS4000 context switching time but it was fast in comparison with other systems of the 1980s, and it was very fast in actual use (running real-time and interactive processes). The performance of L4Linux is quoted within the typical margin of speculative execution mitigations relative to Linux. However, it's a strange idea to me that speed is all that matters for an OS, and not reliability, trustworthiness, etc.

naasking 7y ago

> Tanenbaum where he said he would be ok with Minix being 20% slower than a monolithic kernel like Linux, indicating that it was currently slower than that. It doesn't indicate anything of the sort. He was making a comment that the reliability and security benefits of microkernels are simply more important than performance in this mind.

gnufx 7y ago

They may be old, but what major advances in monolithic kernels have there been to invalidate them now? There seem to have been significant advances in microkernels. (I was glad to have been using fast microkernel-ish systems daily in the 1980s, and not VAX/VMS.)

BurningCycles 7y ago
>but what major advances in monolithic kernels have there been to invalidate them now? What are the significant advances in micro kernels that does not apply to monolithic kernels ? Also they are not only VERY old, they seem intentionally vague when it comes to actual data about the systems they are comparing against. In short, I welcome the new micro kernels so that we can see a comparison between modern monolithic and modern micro kernels and actually get a good representation of what the performance difference is. Because if not for performance, there is no reason not to use a micro kernel.
- gnufx 7y ago
  The L4 work is usually quoted for relatively recent advances. Presumably monolithic kernels don't benefit from performance work that's specific to micro-kernel message passing, if performance was all that mattered. I don't remember the OS4000 context switching time but it was fast in comparison with other systems of the 1980s, and it was very fast in actual use (running real-time and interactive processes). The performance of L4Linux is quoted within the typical margin of speculative execution mitigations relative to Linux. However, it's a strange idea to me that speed is all that matters for an OS, and not reliability, trustworthiness, etc.