Microkernel: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 04:43, 7 March 2006

Revision as of 04:46, 7 March 2006

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==Kernel bloat==

Early operating system kernels were rather small, partly because computer memories were small. As the capability of computers grew, the number of devices the kernel had to control also grew. Early versions of [[UNIX]] had kernels of quite modest size, even though those kernels contained device drivers and file system managers. [[Berkeley UNIX ([[BSD]] beginbegan the era of the "big kernel". When address spaces increased from 16 to 32 bits, kernel design was no longer cramped by the hardware architecture, and kernels began to grow. This growth trend continued for several decades, resulting in Unix, [[Linux]], and [[Windows]] kernels with millions of lines of privileged code.

To date, attempts to reverse this trend have not been highly successful. This is not a technical problem.