4 ms·

L4 Microkernel Family

• peter_d_sherman 6y ago
  >"L4, like its predecessor L3 microkernel, was created by German computer scientist Jochen Liedtke as a response to the poor performance of earlier microkernel-based operating systems. Liedtke felt that a system designed from the start for high performance, rather than other goals, could produce a microkernel of practical use. His original implementation in hand-coded Intel i386-specific assembly language code in 1993 sparked intense interest in the computer industry." [...] >"Specifying the general idea of a microkernel, Liedtke states: A concept is tolerated inside the microkernel only if moving it outside the kernel, i.e., permitting competing implementations, would prevent the implementation of the system's required functionality.[3] In this spirit, the L4 microkernel provides few basic mechanisms: address spaces (abstracting page tables and providing memory protection), threads and scheduling (abstracting execution and providing temporal protection), and inter-process communication (for controlled communication across isolation boundaries)."