Compare monolithic and micro-kernels

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written 7.9 years ago by

Feature	Monolithic kernel	Microkernel
Approach	Older	Newer
Definition	A monolithic kernel is one single program that contains all of the code necessary to perform every kernel related task.	A Microkernel is a kernel design,that provides no OS services at all, only the mechanisms needed to implement those services.
Size of OS	Large	Quite small
Hardware Abstraction	Provides powerful abstractions of the underlying hardware.	Provides a smaller set of simple,hardware abstractions.
Speed	Faster	Slower
Memory Management	In kernel space	In user space
Security and Stability	Because of the "hardwiring" of system processes and the resulting,dependency of the monolithic,approach, it is assumable that other,processes will also crash, resulting in a system-wide halt.	Excluding system processes from kernel space overcomes these problems. Also, It is easier to ensure the correctness of a small kernel, than a big one. That way, stability issues are simpler to solve with that approach.
Inter Process Communication	Uses signals and sockets	Uses message queues
Extensibility and Portability	Adding new features to a monolithic system means recompilation of the whole kernel, often including the whole driver infrastructure.	As the services are isolated from each other through the message,system, it is enough to re-implement the new memory,manager.
Example	Unix, MS-DOS and the early Mac OS	AIX, BeOS, Mach, Mac OS X,,MINIX, and QNX. Etc

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