DevConf.US 2022

We will discuss how we take optimization techniques described in the wide body of unikernel literature and apply them to the Linux operating system. The resulting system allows users to keep the well tested code base of Linux with its wide support for hardware but selectively apply these techniques to fit their needs. We start by linking the application and kernel into a single binary and this can show performance improvements by reducing the cost of a system call. This is just a first step and it allows us to explore more invasive or aggressive optimizations. By making many of the unikernel changes independent and independently configurable we enable a spectrum of "unikenrel-ness" rather than requiring a binary decision allowing us to turn it up to 11. This talk will cover then changes to the Linux kernel and the design choices made for our system and some of the performance gains we observed using various configurations or points on the enabled spectrum.