The Hierarchical Microkernel: A Flexible and Robust OS Architecture

The diversity of applications, hardware platforms and needs for features, e.g. in terms of performance and security, necessitate the continual development of either customized operating systems (OSs) or modifications of existing ones. This is daunting from the efforts for continual re-design and integrity assurance of each OS. In order to provide high-integrity, robust by-design and adaptable OSs to match evolving application-driven computing environments, we propose a highly customizable and robust OS architecture (the Hierarchical Microkernel – HM). The proposed HM architecture enables the flexible design and implementation of highly customizable (at design time) and highly adaptable (at run-time) robust OSs.