A multikernel operating system treats a multi-core machine as a network of independent cores, as if it were a distributed system. It does not assume shared memory but rather implements inter-process communications as message-passing.12 Barrelfish was the first operating system to be described as a multikernel.
References
References
- Baumann et al., "The Multikernel: a new OS architecture for scalable multicore systems", to appear in 22nd Symposium on Operating Systems Principles (2009)
- The Barrelfish operating system, http://www.barrelfish.org/.
- eSOL eMCOS distributed kernel, https://www.esol.com/embedded/emcos.html