What Is the Function of the Kernel of an Operating System?

What Is the Kernel?

What is the kernel? The kernel is a computer program and the core of the operating system. Whenever the system boots, the kernel is the first program loaded after the bootloader since the kernel must handle the rest of the system for the operating system. The kernel will remain in memory until the operating system is shut down.

What Is the Function of the Kernel of an Operating System?

What is the function of the kernel of an operating system? The details are as follows:

• Access to computer resources: The kernel can access various computer resources, such as CPUs, I/O devices, and other resources. It acts as a bridge between users and system resources.
• Resource management: The responsibility of the kernel is to share resources between processes so that each process can access resources uniformly.
• Memory management: Every process needs some memory space. Therefore, memory must be allocated and released for its execution. All this memory management is done by the kernel.
• Device management: The peripheral devices connected to the system are used by the process. Therefore, the allocation of these devices is managed by the kernel.

What Are the Types of Kernel?

After getting information about the kernel functions, then, we will introduce the types of the kernel. Generally speaking, the kernel has 5 types – monolithic kernels, microkernel, hybrid kernel, nanokernel, and exokernel.

Monolithic Kernels

A monolithic kernel is a kernel in which user services and kernel services are implemented in the same memory space, that is, different memories for user services and kernel services are not used in this case. By doing this, the size of the kernel increases, which in turn increases the size of the operating system. Since there is no separate user space and kernel space, the execution of the process in the monolithic kernel will be faster.

Microkernel

The microkernel is different from the monolithic kernel since the user service and the kernel service are implemented in different spaces in the microkernel. Since you use user space and kernel space separately, it reduces the size of the kernel, thereby reducing the size of the operating system.

Hybrid Kernel

The hybrid kernel is a combination of monolithic kernel and microkernel. It takes advantage of the speed of the monolithic core and the modularity of the microkernel.

Nanokernel

In Nanokrnel, the entire code of the kernel is very small, that is, the code executed in the privileged mode of the hardware is very small. The term nanokernel is used to describe a kernel that supports nanosecond clock resolution.

Exokernel

Exokernel is an operating system kernel developed by the MIT Parallel and Distributed Operating System Group. In this type of kernel, resource protection and management are separated, which in turn allows you to perform application-specific customization.

Final Words

What is the function of the kernel of an operating system? What are the types of the kernel? I believe that you have found the answers.