What is meant by kernel?
In computing, the kernel is the central component of most
computer operating systems; it is a bridge between
applications and the actual data processing done at the
The kernel's responsibilities include managing the system's
resources (the communication between hardware and
Usually as a basic component of an operating system, a kernel
can provide the lowest-level abstraction layer for the
resources (especially processors and I/O devices) that
application software must control to perform its function.
It typically makes these facilities available to application
processes through inter-process communication mechanisms
and system calls.
Operating system tasks
are done differently by different kernels,
depending on their design and implementation.
While monolithic kernels execute all the
operating system code in the same address space
to increase the performance of the system,
microkernels run most of the operating system
services in user space as servers, aiming to
improve maintainability and modularity of the
operating system. A range of possibilities exists
between these two extremes.
A kernel connects the application
software to the hardware of a computer.
A typical vision of a computer architecture as a series of abstraction layers:
hardware, firmware, assembler, kernel, operating system and applications
On the definition of "kernel"
While it is today mostly called the kernel, originally the same part of the operating
system was also called the nucleus or core, and was conceived as containing only
the essential support features of the operating system.
However the term core has also been used to refer to the primary memory of a
computer system, because some early computers used a form of memory called
Features of kernel
A kernel will usually provide features for
low-level schedulingof processes (dispatching),
manipulation of process control blocks, interrupt
process creation and
process suspension and
Kernel basic facilities
The kernel's primary purpose is to manage the
computer's resources and allow other programs to
run and use these resources.
Typically, the resources consist of:
The CPU, the processor. This is the most central part
of a computer system, responsible for running or
executing programs on it.
The kernel takes responsibility for deciding at any
time which of the many running programs should be
allocated to the processor or processors (each of
which can usually run only one program at a time)
Kernel basic facilities (Conti-)
The kernel is responsible for deciding which memory
each process can use, and determining what to do
when not enough is available.
Any Input/Output (I/O) devices present in the
computer, such as keyboard, mouse, disk drives,
printers, displays, etc. The kernel allocates requests
from applications to perform I/O to an appropriate
device (or subsection of a device, in the case of files on
a disk or windows on a display) and provides
convenient methods for using the device (typically
abstracted to the point where the application does not
need to know implementation details of the device).
execute all of their code in the same address space
(kernel space) microkernels try to run most of their
services in user space, aiming to improve
maintainability and modularity of the codebase.
Most kernels do not fit exactly into one of these
categories, but are rather found in between these two
These are called hybrid kernels.
More exotic designs such as nanokernels and
exokernels are available, but are seldom used for
production systems. The Xen hypervisor, for example, is
In a monolithic kernel, all OS services run
along with the main kernel thread, thus also
residing in the same memory area.
This approach provides rich and powerful
Some developers, such as UNIX developer
Ken Thompson, maintain that it is "easier to
implement a monolithic kernel“than
The main disadvantages of monolithic
kernels are the dependencies between
system components — a bug in a device
driver might crash the entire system — and
the fact that large kernels can become very
difficult to maintain.
What is meant by microkernel?
In the microkernel
approach, the kernel itself
only provides basic
functionality that allows
the execution of servers,
separate programs that
assume former kernel
functions, such as device
drivers, GUI servers, etc.
The microkernel approaches:
• consists of defining a simple abstraction over the hardware, with a set of
primitives or system calls to implement minimal OS services such as
memory management, multitasking, and inter-process communication.
Other services, including those normally provided by the kernel, such as
networking, are implemented in user-space programs, referred to as
• Microkernels are easier to maintain than monolithic kernels, but the large
number of system calls and context switches might slow down the system
because they typically generate more overhead than plain function calls.
• A microkernel allows the implementation of the remaining part of the
operating system as a normal application program written in a high-level
language, and the use of different operating systems on top of the same
• It is also possible to dynamically switch among operating systems and to
have more than one active simultaneously.
This approach combines the speed and
simpler design of a monolithic kernel with
the modularity and execution safety of a
are a compromise between the monolithic
and microkernel designs.
This implies running some services (such as
the network stack or the filesystem) in
kernel space to reduce the performance
overhead of a traditional microkernel, but
still running kernel code (such as device
drivers) as servers in user space.
delegates virtually all services — including
even the most basic ones like interrupt
controllers or the timer — to device drivers to
make the kernel memory requirement even
smaller than a traditional microkernel
An exokernel is a type of kernel that does not
abstract hardware into theoretical models.
Instead it allocates physical hardware resources,
such as processor time, memory pages, and disk
blocks, to different programs.
A program running on an exokernel can link to a
library operating system that uses the exokernel
to simulate the abstractions of a well-known OS,
or it can develop application-specific abstractions
for better performance.
Mac OS X
is based on Darwin, which uses a Hybrid
Kernel called XNU, which was created
combining the 4.3BSD kernel and the Mach
Four popular categories or kinds of
Hybrid kernels and
are part of Unix-like operating systems like Linux
,FreeBSD etc. These types of kernels consist of
the core functions of the operating system and
the device drivers with the ability to load
modules at runtime.
are part of the operating systems like AIX, BeOS,
Hurd, Mach, Mac OS X, MINIX, QNX. Etc. These
types of kernels normally provide only the
minimal services such as defining memory
address spaces, Inter-process communication
(IPC) and the process management. The other
functions such as running the hardware
processes are not handled directly by
are part of the operating systems such as
Microsoft Windows NT, 2000 and XP. DragonFly
BSD etc. These types of kernels are extensions of
microkernels with some properties of monolithic
kernels. Unlike monolithic kernels, these types
of kernels are unable to load modules at
runtime on their own.
are evolving and still under experimental stage
in development of an operating system that
could incorporate multiple library operating
systems and are intended to simultaneously run
multiple operating systems of different kinds like
Linux and Microsoft Windows together using
appropriate Application Programming Interface
A particular slide catching your eye?
Clipping is a handy way to collect important slides you want to go back to later.