Cocoon

Abstract

As computer processors and their hardware designs continuously evolve, operating systems provide many different assembly-level implementations for the same functionality. This enables support for new platforms and ensures backward compatibility for older ones at the same time. However, the source code of operating systems grows more complex and becomes much harder to maintain. In this paper we explore ways to build made-to-measure system software by relegating work to the compiler which has necessary knowledge about the system at hand. We propose Cocoon, an approach for compiling a system-tailored and -optimized kernel at boot time. For two operating systems (i.e., Linux and FreeBSD) we demonstrate the soundness of the approach by hands of a prototypical implementation. The implementation shows various aspects of Cocoon, such as the ability to remove hard-to-maintain code while preserving and even increasing the system performance.