Linked by Thom Holwerda on Tue 21st Sep 2010 21:15 UTC, submitted by Gregory Plummer
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The Apple XNU kernel is not a microkernel.
Yes, I know.
The fact they use (only parts of) the Mach kernel is misleading, it is an hybrid kernel like NT & others (linux, in a way, with FUSE).
Yes, I know.
But they could port more easily parts of it including IOKit CFLite and other parts free parts to Hurd, like a more complete puredarwin by filling missing parts with Hurd.




Member since:
2009-06-20
The Apple XNU kernel is not a microkernel.
The fact they use (only parts of) the Mach kernel is misleading, it is an hybrid kernel like NT & others (linux, in a way, with FUSE).
The Mach kernel is not always a microkernel: the inter-process communications had so much overhead that the easy way to improve performance was to fuse the servers back inside the kernel, thus going back to a monolithic (or at least hybrid) design. At one time, the Mach "microkernel" was so not "micro" that Jonathan S. Shapiro coined the name "nanokernel" to designate true microkernels.
Edited 2010-09-22 10:30 UTC