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What is a Lightweight Kernel?

Published: 16 June 2015 Publication History

Abstract

Lightweight kernels (LWK) have been in use on the compute nodes of supercomputers for decades. Although many high-end systems now run Linux, interest in options and alternatives has increased in the last couple of years. Future extreme-scale systems require rethinking of the operating system, and modern LWKs may well play a role in the final solution.
In the course of our research, it has become clear that no single definition for a lightweight kernel exists. This paper describes what we mean by the term and what makes LWKs different from other operating system kernels.

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ROSS '15: Proceedings of the 5th International Workshop on Runtime and Operating Systems for Supercomputers
June 2015
70 pages
ISBN:9781450336062
DOI:10.1145/2768405
Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for third-party components of this work must be honored. For all other uses, contact the Owner/Author.

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Published: 16 June 2015

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Author Tags

  1. High Performance Computing
  2. Hybrid kernels
  3. Lightweight kernels
  4. Multi kernels

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ROSS '15 Paper Acceptance Rate 7 of 12 submissions, 58%;
Overall Acceptance Rate 58 of 169 submissions, 34%

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