Multi Microkernel Operating Systems for Multi-Core Processors

Abstract

Problem statement: In the midst of the huge development in processors industry as a response to the increasing demand for high-speed processors manufacturers were able to achieve the goal of producing the required processors, but this industry disappointed hopes, because it faced problems not amenable to solution, such as complexity, hard management and large consumption of energy. These problems forced the manufacturers to stop the focus on increasing the speed of processors and go toward parallel processing to increase performance. This eventually produced multi-core processors with high-performance, if used properly. Unfortunately, until now, these processors did not use as it should be used; because of lack support of operating system and software applications. Approach: The approach based on the assumption that single-kernel operating system was not enough to manage multi-core processors to rethink the construction of multi-kernel operating system. One of these kernels serves as the master kernel and the others serve as slave kernels. Results: Theoretically, the proposed model showed that it can do much better than the existing models; because it supported single-threaded processing and multi-threaded processing at the same time, in addition, it can make better use of multi-core processors because it divided the load almost equally between the cores and the kernels which will lead to a significant improvement in the performance of the operating system. Conclusion: Software industry needed to get out of the classical framework to be able to keep pace with hardware development, this objective was achieved by re-thinking building operating systems and software in a new innovative methodologies and methods, where the current theories of operating systems were no longer capable of achieving the aspirations of future.