JIT Kernels: An Idea Whose Time Has (Just) Come

OS Kernels can be more flexible and perform better Poor performance  Optimized for wrong machine o Stock-compiled for Athlon-64, run on Core-i7  Optimized for expected code path and configuration  Tons of conditional and dynamically-dead code  “Expensive” features not in stock build Poor flexibility  Hard to patch without rebooting  Hard to debug  Hard to change configuration and hardware  Typically just resort to recompile and reboot Research Problem