We introduce server operating systems, which are sets of abstractions and runtime support for specialized, high-performance server applications. We have designed and are implementing a prototype server OS with support for aggressive specialization, direct device-to-device access, an event-driven organization, and dynamic compiler-assisted ILP. Using this server OS, we have constructed an HTTP server that outperforms servers running on a conventional OS by more than an order of magnitude and that can safely timeshare the hardware platform with other applications.
Appeared in the 1996 SIGOPS European Workshop (Connemara, Ireland, September 9-11, 1996, pp. 141-148).
Work on this project continues. See the high-performance servers page for more information.