Computer Engineering Commons^™

Customizable Operating Systems, Jonathan Walpole, Crispin Cowan, Andrew P. Black, Jon Inouye, Calton Pu, Shanwei Cen

Computer Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

A customizable operating system is one that can adapt to improve its functionality or performance. The need for customizable and application-specific operating systems has been recognized for many years, but they have yet to appear in the commercial market. This paper explores the notion of operating system customizability and examines the limits of existing approaches. The paper begins by surveying system structuring approaches for the safe and efficient execution of customizable operating systems. Then it discusses the burden that existing approaches impose on application software, and explores techniques for reducing this burden. Finally, support for customizability in the Synthetix project …