Lecture

Rethinking OSes for Datacenters

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Description

This lecture discusses the challenges faced by traditional OSes in datacenters due to the rapid growth of data and the inability to keep up with I/O improvements. The instructor presents a new approach called Junction, which combines kernel bypass with resource multiplexing to improve performance, security, and utilization simultaneously. By shifting functionality to userspace, Junction reduces kernel crossing overhead and enables faster reactions to system calls. The lecture showcases how Junction achieves significant performance improvements without the need to rewrite applications. Through comparisons with VMs, libOSes, and containers, the lecture demonstrates Junction's ability to maintain high performance while enhancing resource sharing. The impact of Junction is highlighted as a design, a state-of-the-art baseline, and a platform for new cloud programming models.

Official source

Ontological neighbourhood

Computer engineering

Computer architecture: Topics in computer architecture

Related concepts (32)

Linux kernel

The Linux kernel is a free and open-source, monolithic, modular, multitasking, Unix-like operating system kernel. It was originally written in 1991 by Linus Torvalds for his i386-based PC, and it was soon adopted as the kernel for the GNU operating system, which was written to be a free (libre) replacement for Unix. Linux is provided under the GNU General Public License version 2 only, but it contains files under other compatible licenses.

Virtualization

In computing, virtualization or virtualisation (sometimes abbreviated v12n, a numeronym) is the act of creating a virtual (rather than actual) version of something at the same abstraction level, including virtual computer hardware platforms, storage devices, and computer network resources. Virtualization began in the 1960s, as a method of logically dividing the system resources provided by mainframe computers between different applications. An early and successful example is IBM CP/CMS.

Linux

Linux (ˈlɪnʊks ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which includes the kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name "GNU/Linux" to emphasize the use and importance of GNU software in many distributions, causing some controversy.

System call

In computing, a system call (commonly abbreviated to syscall) is the programmatic way in which a computer program requests a service from the operating system on which it is executed. This may include hardware-related services (for example, accessing a hard disk drive or accessing the device's camera), creation and execution of new processes, and communication with integral kernel services such as process scheduling. System calls provide an essential interface between a process and the operating system.

Hardware virtualization

Hardware virtualization is the virtualization of computers as complete hardware platforms, certain logical abstractions of their componentry, or only the functionality required to run various operating systems. Virtualization hides the physical characteristics of a computing platform from the users, presenting instead an abstract computing platform. At its origins, the software that controlled virtualization was called a "control program", but the terms "hypervisor" or "virtual machine monitor" became preferred over time.

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