Transkernel: Bridging Monolithic Kernels to Peripheral Cores

Overview

Transkernel is a novel OS model for heterogeneous multi-processors. It executes the energy-consuming kernel device driver code of the CPU on a peripheral core; it combines DBT and emulation for bridging ISA gaps and for catering to core asymmetry, respectively.

Why Transkernel

Device suspend/resume is inefficient: it is bound by physical factors (e.g., slow power transition, low-speed buses), where numerous idle epochs of CPU are wasted; it accounts for most kernel energy consumption.

→ Device suspend/resume should instead be exectued on a much more energy-efficient core -- the peripheral core (e.g., Cortex-M) already existing on a modern SoC.
Code transplant is unsustainable: forming a multikernel out of an existing monolithic kernel (e.g., Linux) while still presenting a single system's image is unsustainable, as the formed kernel (i.e., the peripheral kernel) has to cater for each single corresponding release of the main kernel.

→ The code should instead be executed dynamically through binary translation (DBT).

Related Publication

[ATC’19] "Transkernel: Bridging Monolithic Kernels to Peripheral Cores," Liwei Guo, Shuang Zhai, Yi Qiao, and Felix Xiaozhu Lin, Proc. USENIX Annual Technical Conference, 2019.

Source code

ftp://ftp.ecn.purdue.edu/xzl/software/transkernel/

Build guide

TBD

People

PhD students

Liwei Guo, Purdue ECE
Shuang Zhai, Purdue ECE
Yi Qiao, Purdue ECE

Faculty and Researchers

Felix Xiaozhu Lin, Purdue ECE

License

All the pre-existing code and data are subject to their own licenses. All the userspace programs and kernel modules resulted from this project are under FreeBSD license.

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:

Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.

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