Unikernal Linux
Unikernels are small, lightweight, single address space operating systems with the kernel included as a library within the application. Because unikernels run a single application, there is no sharing or competition for resources among different applications, improving performance and security. Unikernels have thus far seen limited production deployment. This project aims to turn the Linux kernel into a unikernel with the following characteristics: 1) are easily compiled for any application, 2) use battle-tested, production Linux and glibc code, 3) allow the entire upstream Linux developer community to maintain and develop the code, and 4) provide applications normally running vanilla Linux to benefit from unikernel performance and security advantages. The paper Unikernels: The Next Stage of Linux’s Dominance was presented at HotOS XVII, The 17th Workshop on Hot Topics in Operating Systems, 2019.
For more information on the unique partnership that produced it, please see the article by Ali and Parul in Red Hat Research Quarterly magazine Volume 1, Issue 2.
Project Posters
Link to full size “Unikernel Linux” poster
Link to full size “Introducing the Chrono-kernel” poster
Project Team
- Ali Raza
- Tommy Unger
- Eric Munson
- Matthew Boyd
- Parul Sohal
- Ulrich Drepper
- Daniel Bristot de Oliveira
- Richard Jones
- Larry Woodman
- Jonathan Appavoo
- Orran Krieger
- Renato Mancuso
- James Cadden
- Isaiah Stapleton
Publications
- Ali Raza, Parul Sohal, James Cadden, Jonathan Appavoo, Ulrich Drepper, Richard Jones, Orran Krieger, Renato Mancuso, and Larry Woodman. 2019. Unikernels: The Next Stage of Linux’s Dominance. In Workshop on Hot Topics in Operating Systems (HotOS ’19), May 13–15, 2019, Bertinoro, Italy. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 7 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3317550.3321445
- A fork() in the road