18-01-2025

Lecture 5:OS Structures

Operating Systems
Dr. Anjali
Assistant Professor

Operating Systems: How are they organized?

• Simple
• Only one or two levels of code
• Layered
• Lower levels independent of upper levels
• Modular
• Core kernel with Dynamically loadable modules
• Microkernel
• OS built from many user-level processes

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OS Structure - Simple Approach

• MS-DOS - provides a
lot of functionality in
little space.
• Not divided into modules,
Interfaces and levels of
functionality are not well
separated

Original UNIX System Structure/ Monolithic

• Limited structuring, has 2

separable parts
• Systems programs
• Kernel
• everything below system call interface and above
physical hardware.
• Filesystem, CPU scheduling, memory
management

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Monolithic

Pros
• All kernel routines are together,
• l Shared kernel space
linked in single large executable
• l Good performance
• Each can call any other
Cons
• Services and utilities • l Instability: crash in any
• A system call interface procedure
• Examples: • brings system down
• Linux, BSD Unix, Windows, … • l Inflexible / hard to maintain,
extend

Layered OS Structure

• OS divided into number of

layers - bottom layer is
hardware, highest layer is
the user interface.

• Each layer uses functions

and services of only lower-
level layers.

• THE Operating System and

Linux Kernel has successive
layers of abstraction.

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Microkernel System Structure

Application File Device user

Program System Driver mode

messages messages

Interprocess memory CPU kernel

Communication managment scheduling mode

microkernel

hardware

Monolithic vs. Microkernel OS

• Monolithic OSes have large kernels with a lot of components

• Linux, Windows, Mac

• Microkernels moves as much from the kernel into “user” space

• Small core OS components running at kernel level
• OS Services built from many independent user-level processes

• Communication between modules with message passing

• Benefits:
• Easier to extend a microkernel
• Easier to port OS to new architectures
• More reliable and more secure (less code is running in kernel mode)
• Fault Isolation (parts of kernel protected from other par
• Detriments:
• Performance overhead severe for naïve implementation 8

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A microkernel OS

Modules

• Many modern operating systems implement

loadable kernel modules
• Uses object-oriented approach
• Each core component is separate
• Each talks to the others over known interfaces
• Each is loadable as needed within the kernel
• Overall, similar to layers but with more flexible
• Linux, Solaris, etc

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Solaris Modular Approach

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Hybrid Systems

• Most modern operating systems are actually not one pure

model
• Hybrid combines multiple approaches to address performance,
security, usability needs
• Linux and Solaris kernels in kernel address space, so monolithic, plus
modular for dynamic loading of functionality
• Windows mostly monolithic, plus microkernel for different subsystem
personalities
• Apple Mac OS X hybrid, layered, Aqua UI plus Cocoa
programming environment
• Below is kernel consisting of Mach microkernel and BSD Unix parts,
plus I/O kit and dynamically loadable modules (called kernel
extensions)

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Mac OS X Structure

graphical user interface

Aqua

application environments and services

Java Cocoa Quicktime BSD

kernel environment
BSD

Mach

I/O kit kernel extensions

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iOS

• Apple mobile OS for iPhone, iPad

• Structured on Mac OS X, added functionality
• Does not run OS X applications natively
• Also runs on different CPU architecture (ARM vs.
Intel)
• Cocoa Touch Objective-C API for developing apps
• Media services layer for graphics, audio, video
• Core services provides cloud computing, databases
• Core operating system, based on Mac OS X kernel

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Android
• Developed by Open Handset Alliance (mostly Google)
• Open Source
• Similar stack to IOS
• Based on Linux kernel but modified
• Provides process, memory, device-driver management
• Adds power management
• Runtime environment includes core set of libraries and Dalvik
virtual machine
• Apps developed in Java plus Android API
• Java class files compiled to Java bytecode then translated to executable
than runs in Dalvik VM
• Libraries include frameworks for web browser (webkit),
database (SQLite), multimedia, smaller libc

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Android Architecture

Application Framework

Libraries Android runtime

SQLite openGL Core Libraries

surface media
Dalvik
manager framework
virtual machine
webkit libc

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Virtual Machines

Physical Machine

Application

OS

Hardware

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Virtual Machines

Virtual Machine 1 Virtual Machine 2 Virtual Machine 3

Application Application Application

OS OS OS

Virtual Machine Monitor (VMM) (aka Hypervisor)

Hardware

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Virtual Machines

• Use cases
●Resource configuration
●Running multiple OSes, either the same or different
OSes
●Run existing OS binaries on different architecture

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