IncludeOS – Run your application with zero overhead
includeos.org
includeos.org
The thing is, this is something called “unikernel[1]”, which basically can be linked directly into your application. With this, you just boot into your application instead of general-purpose OS like Linux. IIRC, it’s even possible to this on top of another OS. This comes with a lot of benefits, but with a lot of caveats, too.
>IncludeOS is an operating system written as a library. When building an application, the build system includes the code that would typically reside in your operating system into the application itself. When it is done building a bootloader is added. So, after a successful build, you now have a standalone application that boots without an operating system. The application is now capable of driving the hardware, it has an IP stack and manages its memory.
>Unlike more traditional operating systems IncludeOS is meant for single task computers. There is only a single application running. For multiple security domains, we require multiple machines, and we leave the separation task to the hypervisor.
They could have just called it Cloud-DOS.
[2] https://github.com/unikra ft/unikraft
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21905955
https://github.com/includeos/IncludeOS/issues/2211
But any network drivers you need are linked, or compiled, right into your program, instead of in a kernel you run on top of. If Amazon is providing a virtualized NIC, you compile in drivers for that under the IP stack you have also compiled in. Amazon's hypervisor might proxy access to actual or synthetic network devices, or might map a real NIC into your VM, or they might even boot your program on a real machine with real NIC, for all the world as if it is booting a proper kernel.
It really is as if your app is your kernel, which just doesn't bother with any sort of user programs, because your code is all right there. Instead of doing system calls, it just does regular function calls to what would have been kernel services.
Because it is all just one program, you can inline a lot of stuff that would normally have a system call or module indirection interposed. This would be a good place for LTO, to inline everything that could benefit by it.
Iirc the main advantages are eliminating a lot of context switching (your app is the kernel, so theres no context switching for kernel calls) and reducing unneeded features (i.e. if your app doesn't need networking, then it won't put any network drivers in your app-OS).
Its mostly a performance optimization afaik. There's some supposed security features because it drops parts of the OS you don't need, which reduces the attack surface. I don't know if there are any additional risks from it though; making the app run in ring 0 makes me uneasy. I think that might just be because passing from userland to kernel land is a significant exploit in normal OS'.