Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Peng, Yuke, Tian, Hongliang, Junyang, Zhang, Li, Ruihan, Chen, Chengjun, Jiang, Jianfeng, Xian, Jinyi, Wang, Xiaolin, Xu, Chenren, Zhou, Diyu, Luo, Yingwei, Yan, Shoumeng, Zhang, Yinqian
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.03876
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866910986814881792
author Peng, Yuke
Tian, Hongliang
Junyang, Zhang
Li, Ruihan
Chen, Chengjun
Jiang, Jianfeng
Xian, Jinyi
Wang, Xiaolin
Xu, Chenren
Zhou, Diyu
Luo, Yingwei
Yan, Shoumeng
Zhang, Yinqian
author_facet Peng, Yuke
Tian, Hongliang
Junyang, Zhang
Li, Ruihan
Chen, Chengjun
Jiang, Jianfeng
Xian, Jinyi
Wang, Xiaolin
Xu, Chenren
Zhou, Diyu
Luo, Yingwei
Yan, Shoumeng
Zhang, Yinqian
contents How can one build a feature-rich, general-purpose, Rust-based operating system (OS) with a minimal and sound Trusted Computing Base (TCB) for memory safety? Existing Rust-based OSes fall short due to their improper use of unsafe Rust in kernel development. To address this challenge, we propose a novel OS architecture called framekernel that realizes Rust's full potential to achieve intra-kernel privilege separation, ensuring TCB minimality and soundness. We present OSTD, a streamlined framework for safe Rust OS development, and Asterinas, a Linux ABI-compatible framekernel OS implemented entirely in safe Rust using OSTD. Supporting over 210 Linux system calls, Asterinas delivers performance on par with Linux, while maintaining a minimized, memory-safety TCB of only about 14.0% of the codebase. These results underscore the practicality and benefits of the framekernel architecture in building safe and efficient OSes.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2506_03876
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Asterinas: A Linux ABI-Compatible, Rust-Based Framekernel OS with a Small and Sound TCB
Peng, Yuke
Tian, Hongliang
Junyang, Zhang
Li, Ruihan
Chen, Chengjun
Jiang, Jianfeng
Xian, Jinyi
Wang, Xiaolin
Xu, Chenren
Zhou, Diyu
Luo, Yingwei
Yan, Shoumeng
Zhang, Yinqian
Operating Systems
How can one build a feature-rich, general-purpose, Rust-based operating system (OS) with a minimal and sound Trusted Computing Base (TCB) for memory safety? Existing Rust-based OSes fall short due to their improper use of unsafe Rust in kernel development. To address this challenge, we propose a novel OS architecture called framekernel that realizes Rust's full potential to achieve intra-kernel privilege separation, ensuring TCB minimality and soundness. We present OSTD, a streamlined framework for safe Rust OS development, and Asterinas, a Linux ABI-compatible framekernel OS implemented entirely in safe Rust using OSTD. Supporting over 210 Linux system calls, Asterinas delivers performance on par with Linux, while maintaining a minimized, memory-safety TCB of only about 14.0% of the codebase. These results underscore the practicality and benefits of the framekernel architecture in building safe and efficient OSes.
title Asterinas: A Linux ABI-Compatible, Rust-Based Framekernel OS with a Small and Sound TCB
topic Operating Systems
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.03876