Skip to main content

Part of the book series: High-Performance Computing Series ((HPC,volume 1))

  • 1054 Accesses

Abstract

Lightweight operating system kernels (LWKs), as we define them today (Riesen et al, Proceedings of the 5th international workshop on runtime and operating systems for supercomputers, ROSS ’15, 2015) for high-end high-performance computing (HPC) systems, started to appear in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Supercomputers, and the applications that made use of them, had specific requirements and challenges that made multi-user workstation operating systems (OSs) unsuitable for these machines.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 109.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 149.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 139.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

References

  • Anderson, T. E., Culler, D. E., & Patterson, D. A. (1995). The berkeley networks of workstations (NOW) project. In Proceedings of the 40th IEEE Computer Society International Conference, COMPCON ’95 (p. 322). Washington, DC, USA: IEEE Computer Society.

    Google Scholar 

  • Brightwell, R., Maccabe, A. B., & Riesen, R. (2003). Design, implementation, and performance of MPI on Portals 3.0. The International Journal of High Performance Computing Applications, 17(1), 7–20.

    Google Scholar 

  • Giampapa, M., Gooding, T., Inglett, T., & Wisniewski, R. (2010). Experiences with a lightweight supercomputer kernel: Lessons learned from Blue Gene’s CNK. In 2010 International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis (SC).

    Google Scholar 

  • Kitai, K., Isobe, T., Tanaka, Y., Tamaki, Y., Fukagawa, M., Tanaka, T., et al. (1993). Parallel processing architecture for the Hitachi S-3800 shared-memory vector multiprocessor. In ICS’93 Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Supercomputing.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kumar, S., Mamidala, A., Faraj, D., Smith, B., Blocksome, M., Cernohous, B., et al. (2012). PAMI: A parallel active message interface for the Blue Gene/Q supercomputer. In 2012 IEEE 26th International Parallel Distributed Processing Symposium (IPDPS) (pp. 763–773).

    Google Scholar 

  • Maccabe, A. B., & Wheat, S. R. (1993). Message passing in PUMA. Technical report SAND93-0935, Sandia National Laboratories.

    Google Scholar 

  • McBryan, O. A. (1994). An overview of message passing environments. Parallel Computing, 20(4), 417–444. Message Passing Interfaces.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nieplocha, J., & Carpenter, B. (1999). ARMCI: A portable remote memory copy library for distributed array libraries and compiler run-time systems. In International Parallel Processing Symposium (IPPS) (pp. 533–546). Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nugent, S. F. (1988). The iPSC/2 direct-connect communications technology. In Proceedings of the Third Conference on Hypercube Concurrent Computers and Applications: Architecture, Software, Computer Systems, and General Issues - Volume 1, C3P (pp. 51–60). New York, NY, USA: ACM.

    Google Scholar 

  • Palmer, J. F. (1988). The NCUBE family of high-performance parallel computer systems. In Proceedings of the Third Conference on Hypercube Concurrent Computers and Applications: Architecture, Software, Computer Systems, and General Issues - Volume 1, C3P (pp. 847–851). New York, NY, USA: ACM.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pierce, P. (1988). The NX/2 operating system. In Proceedings of the Third Conference on Hypercube Concurrent Computers and Applications: Architecture, Software, Computer Systems, and General Issues - Volume 1, C3P (pp. 384–390). New York, NY, USA: ACM.

    Google Scholar 

  • Riesen, R., Maccabe, A. B., & Wheat, S. R. (1994). Active messages versus explicit message passing under SUNMOS. In Proceedings of the Intel Supercomputer Users’ Group. 1994 Annual North America Users’ Conference (pp. 297–303).

    Google Scholar 

  • Riesen, R., Brightwell, R., Bridges, P. G., Hudson, T., Maccabe, A. B., Widener, P. M., et al. (2009). Designing and implementing lightweight kernels for capability computing. Concurrency and Computation: Practice and Experience, 21(6), 793–817.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Riesen, R., Maccabe, A. B., Gerofi, B., Lombard, D. N., Lange, J. J., Pedretti, K., et al. (2015). What is a lightweight kernel? In Proceedings of the 5th International Workshop on Runtime and Operating Systems for Supercomputers, ROSS ’15. New York, NY, USA: ACM.

    Google Scholar 

  • Saini, S., & Simon, H. (1994). Applications performance under OSF/1 AD and SUNMOS on Intel Paragon XP/S-15. In Supercomputing ’94, Proceedings (pp. 580–589).

    Google Scholar 

  • Sunderam, V. S. (1990). PVM: A framework for parallel distributed computing. Concurrency: Practice and Experience, 2(4), 315–339.

    Google Scholar 

  • v. Eicken, T., Culler, D. E., Goldstein, S. C., & Schauser, K. E. (1992). Active messages: A mechanism for integrated communication and computation. In Proceedings the 19th Annual International Symposium on Computer Architecture (pp. 256–266).

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Rolf Riesen .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2019 Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Riesen, R., Gerofi, B., Ishikawa, Y., Wisniewski, R.W. (2019). Overview: The Birth of Lightweight Kernels. In: Gerofi, B., Ishikawa, Y., Riesen, R., Wisniewski, R.W. (eds) Operating Systems for Supercomputers and High Performance Computing. High-Performance Computing Series, vol 1. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-6624-6_2

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-6624-6_2

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Singapore

  • Print ISBN: 978-981-13-6623-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-981-13-6624-6

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics