Title
Shadow Kernels: A General Mechanism For Kernel Specialization in Existing Operating Systems.
Abstract
Existing operating systems share a common kernel text section amongst all processes. It is not possible to perform kernel specialization or tuning such that different applications execute text optimized for their kernel use despite the benefits of kernel specialization for performance guided optimization, exokernels, kernel fastpaths, and cheaper hardware access. Current specialization primitives involve system wide changes to kernel text, which can have adverse effects on other processes sharing the kernel due to the global side-effects. We present shadow kernels: a primitive that allows multiple kernel text sections to coexist in a contemporary operating system. By remapping kernel virtual memory on a context-switch, or for individual system calls, we specialize the kernel on a fine-grained basis. Our implementation of shadow kernels uses the Xen hypervisor so can be applied to any operating system that runs on Xen.
Year
DOI
Venue
2016
10.1145/2797022.2797027
Operating Systems Review
Field
DocType
Volume
Graph kernel,Kernel (linear algebra),sysfs,Computer science,Hypervisor,Tree kernel,Real-time computing,Kernel preemption,Configfs,Kernel virtual address space,Operating system
Journal
50
Issue
ISSN
Citations 
1
0163-5980
1
PageRank 
References 
Authors
0.36
16
5
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Oliver R. A. Chick130.75
Lucian Carata2255.46
James Snee351.16
Nikilesh Balakrishnan4232.85
Ripduman Sohan536830.28