From the course: Software Architecture Foundations
Join today to access over 24,600 courses taught by industry experts.
Microkernel (plugin) architecture
From the course: Software Architecture Foundations
Microkernel (plugin) architecture
- The next pattern of interest is the microkernel pattern. The first microkernel realization was an operating system. The idea is to put the essential capabilities of your system into a single stand-alone executable called the kernel. In an operating system for example, the kernel handles virtual memory and the file system. Other capabilities are implemented as stand-alone execution units that effectively plug into the kernel to do their work. In Linux for example, the operating system itself is made up of a myriad of services written as independent programs, all of which use the core services in the Linux kernel to do their work. The operating system itself is the sum of the kernel and all of those other services. They typically plug into the kernel in a way that makes communication very efficient, being allowed to make direct calls to the kernel methods for example. Normal applications can't do that. In older Unix flavors you had to recompile the kernel to add a plugin, and that's…
Download courses and learn on the go
Watch courses on your mobile device without an internet connection. Download courses using your iOS or Android LinkedIn Learning app.