The Next-Generation OS Process Abstraction

TL;DR

This paper reviews recent research on OS process abstractions, identifying potential enhancements to improve security, performance, and hardware support, aiming to influence future OS designs.

Contribution

It analyzes current process features, derives key characteristics, and proposes extensions to guide the evolution of OS process abstractions.

Findings

Identifies key process characteristics for OS evolution

Proposes extensions to enhance security and performance

Highlights hardware support opportunities

Abstract

Operating Systems are built upon a set of abstractions to provide resource management and programming APIs for common functionality, such as synchronization, communication, protection, and I/O. The process abstraction is the bridge across these two aspects; unsurprisingly, research efforts pay particular attention to the process abstraction, aiming at enhancing security, improving performance, and supporting hardware innovations. However, given the intrinsic difficulties to implement modifications at the OS level, recent endeavors have not yet been widely adopted in production-oriented OSes. Still, we believe the current hardware evolution and new application requirements provide favorable conditions to change this trend. This paper evaluates recent research on OS process features identifying potential evolution paths. We derive a set of relevant process characteristics, and propose how to extend them as to benefit OSes and applications.