fast os switching... 1676

On Wednesday 21 June 2006 11:51, delfick stood up and spoke the following words to the mbuttes incomp.os.linux.misc...:

This is called virtualization and exists in hardware on mainframes. Allegedly, Intel is planning to integrate hardware virtualization in their next generation ofx86CPU's.

This also exists. It requires a microkernel - possibly even an exokernel.

Linux and NT are so-called monolithic kernels. That means that they handle process scheduling, memory access and hardware access. Microkernels - like GNU Mach-Hurd - only handle process scheduling and memory access, leaving hardware access - i.e. driver code - to userspace. Exokernels only handle process scheduling and leave everything else to userspace.

VMWarehas a commercial product that will allow this, but there is also a FOSS initiative in that area, which however only supports GNU-Linux at this stage.

Other than that, there is also UML - i.e. UserMode Linux - which provides for a special Linux kernel that runs in userspace, in an already running GNU-Linux system. This kernel is typically started off of an.isoimage of a root filesystem. Work is still heavily in progress in that area, though.

Hope this was useful... ;-)

-- With kind regards,

*Aragorn* (Registered GNU-Linux user #223157)