Trustworthy Systems

Single kernel stack L4

Authors

Matthew Warton

    School of Computer Science and Engineering
    UNSW,
    Sydney 2052, Australia

Abstract

Operating systems use kernel stacks to support the execution of threads. A typical multi threaded operating system uses one kernel stack per thread. This stack per thread model consumes a significant amount of kernel memory.

An alternative model is the use of a single kernel stack that is shared between all threads. This reduces the operating systems memory consumption.

This thesis implements the single stack kernel architecture in the L4 microkernel to evaluate the performance and memory tradeoffs. It is shown that significant memory savings can be achieved without degrading the kernels performance. Preliminary results show improvement in the kernels performance due to the single stack architecure, however more experiments are required to verify this result.

BibTeX Entry

  @mastersthesis{Warton:be,
    address          = {Sydney, Australia},
    author           = {Matthew Warton},
    month            = nov,
    paperUrl         = {https://trustworthy.systems/publications/theses_public/05/Warton%3Abe.pdf},
    school           = {School of Computer Science and Engineering},
    title            = {Single Kernel Stack {L4}},
    year             = {2005}
  }

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