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Server operating systems

Published 9 September 1996Open access
M. Frans Kaashoek, Dawson Engler, Gregory R. Ganger, Deborah A. Wallach
Citations72
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TL;DR

A prototype server OS is designed and implemented with support for aggressive specialization, direct device-to-device access, an event-driven organization, and dynamic compiler-assisted ILP, and an HTTP server that outperforms servers running on a conventional OS by more than an order of magnitude.

Abstract

We introduce server operating systems, which are sets of abstractions and runtime support for specialized, high-performance server applications. We have designed and are implementing a prototype server OS with support for aggressive specialization, direct device-to-device access, an event-driven organization, and dynamic compiler-assisted ILP. Using this server OS, we have constructed an HTTP server that outperforms servers running on a conventional OS by more than an order of magnitude and that can safely timeshare the hardware platform with other applications.

Keywords

Computer Science