Arrakis: A Case for the End of the Empire

In this paper, we argue that recent device hardware trends enable a new approach to the design of operating systems: instead of the operating system mediating access to hardware, applications run directly on top of virtualized I/O devices, where the kernel provides only control plane services. This new division of labor is transparent to the user, except that applications are able to offer more robust extensibility, security and performance than was previously possible. We discuss some of the hardware and software challenges to realizing this vision.