The nonkernel: A kernel designed for the cloud

Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) cloud computing is causing a fundamental shift in the way computing resources are bought, sold, and used. We foresee a future whereby every CPU cycle, every memory word, and every byte of network bandwidth in the cloud would have a constantly changing market-driven price. We argue that, in such an environment, the underlying resources should be exposed directly to applications without kernel or hypervisor involvement. We propose the nonkernel, an architecture for operating system kernel construction designed for such cloud computing platforms. A nonkernel uses modern architectural support for machine virtualization to securely provide unprivileged user programs with pervasive access to the underlying resources. We motivate the need for the nonkernel, we contrast it against its predecessor the exokernel, and we outline how one could go about building a nonkernel operating system.