Re: [ OFFTOPIC ] Re: is Linux obsolete?

Stephen D. Williams (sdw@lig.net)
Thu, 27 May 1999 14:59:31 -0400


It is microkernel BASED, which doesn't mean that it's still microkernal. Or
it's microkernel macroservice based.

It seems apparent that the only way to reduce overhead with microkernel's is to
implement VIA and/or Posix.4 style IO everywhere. If you can decouple context
switches and system calls from individual events that currently require them,
you can get closer to optimum performance. Super-scalar at the OS level in a
sense.

The microkernel/monolithic kernel situation is starting to remind me of the ISO
stack vs. TCP/IP. In theory it's cleaner and buys you something, but in
practice it prevents a lot of optimizations and you have a hard time finding the
advantages. For example it's pretty tough to implement zero-copy in a
traditional ISO stack.

sdw

Mikulas Patocka wrote:

> > I noticed most OSes being
> > developed today are microkernel based, e. g. Windows NT, GNU HURD, BeOS...
>
> Windows NT is microkernel???????????
>
> Mikulas
>
> -
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