Title :
Design and implementation of dynamically reconstructing system software
Author :
Kashiwagi, Kazuhiko ; Saisho, Keizo ; Fukuda, Akira
Author_Institution :
Graduate Sch. of Inf. Sci., Nara Inst. of Sci. & Technol., Japan
Abstract :
In traditional operating systems, there are many weak points. In monolithic kernel-based operating systems, many functions have been implemented in the kernel to satisfy various requests from user applications. As a result, the kernel itself has become more complex and bigger than expected, and many weak points have been appeared in it. A microkernel-based operating system improves the weak points of a monolithic kernel-based one by separating the kernel itself from the kernel functions (called system servers). In such a system, a microkernel architecture is supplied for flexibility and expansibility, but there are weak points in that structure too. In order to get over the weak points of traditional operating systems, a new operating system architecture is needed. In this paper, a new kernel structure is suggested. It enables one to reconstruct kernel functions dynamically at execution time, but there are some problems with realizing such a kernel. In this paper, we describe how to divide kernel functions into multiple modules and how to implement the suggested kernel. By implementing and evaluating a prototype of the kernel, the effectiveness of the suggested kernel architecture is confirmed
Keywords :
operating system kernels; dynamically reconstructing system software; execution time; expansibility; flexibility; kernel structure; microkernel architecture; microkernel-based operating system; monolithic kernel-based operating system; multiple modules; operating system architecture; prototype; run-time kernel function reconstruction; system servers; user applications; weak points; Application software; Computer architecture; Hardware; Information science; Kernel; Multimedia systems; Operating systems; Prototypes; System software; Time factors;
Conference_Titel :
Software Engineering Conference, 1996. Proceedings., 1996 Asia-Pacific
Conference_Location :
Seoul
Print_ISBN :
0-8186-7638-8
DOI :
10.1109/APSEC.1996.566762