The really "weird" or "funny" thing about microkernels IMHO is that in a way, everyone is running one nowadays… it's just distributed across the many processors

The really "weird" or "funny" thing about microkernels IMHO is that in a way, everyone is running one nowadays… it's just distributed across the many processors in your system. SSDs have a processors, GPUs are giant processors, NICs have processors, chipsets have processors, USB controllers have processors, sound chips have processors, even the processor has… smaller extra processors. PCI Express is the IPC standard for most of these and IOMMUs have brought in proper isolation. … in a way, it's a very inflexible, inhomogenous and intransparent microkernel getup. I think Apple are currently the only people who actively understand this and are trying to use it to their benefit, with their ongoing deep integration of peripherals. I just wish they'd get rid of the inflexibility and intransparency :(