https://github.com/SESA/EbbRT

EbbRT: elastic building block runtime
https://github.com/SESA/EbbRT

libraryos unikernel

Last synced: about 1 month ago
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EbbRT: elastic building block runtime

• Host: GitHub
• URL: https://github.com/SESA/EbbRT
• Owner: SESA
• License: bsl-1.0
• Created: 2013-05-14T16:28:36.000Z (over 11 years ago)
• Default Branch: master
• Last Pushed: 2024-07-23T17:13:04.000Z (5 months ago)
• Last Synced: 2024-08-02T19:31:15.177Z (4 months ago)
• Topics: libraryos, unikernel
• Language: C
• Homepage:
• Size: 4.51 MB
• Stars: 73
• Watchers: 21
• Forks: 17
• Open Issues: 8
• Metadata Files:
  • Readme: README.md
  • Contributing: CONTRIBUTING.md
  • License: LICENSE

Awesome Lists containing this project

• awesome-unikernels - EbbRT - Boston University unikernel research project. (Projects / Generic)

README

        
The Elastic Building Block Runtime (EbbRT)

=====

**This is a research project out of the Boston University Computer

   Science Department**

Computers used to be large, expensive and centrally owned. Operating

systems were designed to multiplex hardware across multiple

applications and users. Presently, Cloud Computing allows users to

rent entire virtual machines to run their own OS and applications. In

this context, the hypervisor multiplexes hardware across multiple

applications and users. We can build more efficient software by

constructing custom, application-specific operating systems rather

than deploying general purpose operating systems within virtual

machines.

![image](doc/img/objective.png)

## Design

EbbRT is designed first and foremost for performance and

maintainability. A high performance system that cannot be maintained

will soon fall behind. This is one of the primary pitfalls of

customized systems. EbbRT adopts several techniques in order to

achieve this:

* EbbRT is comprised of a set of components that developers can

extend, replace or discard in order to construct and deploy a

particular application. This enables a much greater degree of

customization than existing general purpose systems while promoting

the reuse of non-performance-critical components

* EbbRT components run in a light-weight event-driven environment. This

reduces the runtime complexity yet provides enough flexibility for a

wide range of applications.

* EbbRT library operating systems can run within virtual machines on

unmodified hypervisors. This allows us to deploy EbbRT applications on

commodity clouds.

* EbbRT library operating systems run alongside general purpose

operating systems. This allows functionality to be offloaded for

compatibility, reducing the maintenance burden by avoiding the

construction of new software.

* EbbRT uses many modern and high-level programming techniques not

typically found in operating systems software. This was chosen

deliberately to reduce the complexity of the software.

## Detail

EbbRT is comprised of a set of an x86_64 library OS and toolchain as

well as a Linux userspace library. Both runtimes are written

predominately in C++11. The native library OS is deployed along with a

modified GNU toolchain (gcc, binutils, libstdc++) and newlib (libc)

that provide an x86_64-ebbrt target. Application code targeting the

native library OS is compiled with this toolchain and the resulting

binary is a bootable ELF linked with the library OS. We provide C and

C++ standard library implementations which make it straightforward to

use many third party software libraries.

## Further Reading

*EbbRT: A Framework for Building Per-Application Library Operating Systems.*

12th USENIX Symposium on Operating Systems Design and Implementation (OSDI

16). [(PDF)](doc/ebbrt-OSDI_16.pdf)

## Contact

Please email us at [email protected]