COMP: L4 nanokernel

Eugene Leitl (Eugene.Leitl@lrz.uni-muenchen.de)
Sun, 29 Dec 1996 21:01:35 +0100 (MET)

A short addendum on the L4 nanokernel: it contains merely

- task/thread management
- memory management
- device driver support

Its keystone is inter-process communication (IPC). Page faults,
preemption and interrupts are reduced to IPC. Cycle overhead for short
messages: 250 cycles (Mach takes 5750 cycles). Kernel size: 12 kBytes, 1
kByte for optimized IPC path.

More URLs:

Jochen Liedtke; On ukernel construction, in 15. ACM Symposium on
Operating System Principles (SOSP), pp. 237-250
http://borneo.gmd.de/RS/L4/sosp95.ps

Jochen Liedtke, L4 Reference Manual (Intel 486, Pentium, Pentium Pro)
http://www.inf.tu-dresden.de/~mh1/13/

and

http://os.inf.tu-dresden.de/L4/LinuxOnL4/LiOnL4.html

ftp://ftp.inf.tu-dresden.de/pub/os/L4/devel/l4-<datum>.tar.gz

Another thing to watch for might be the Exokernel.