Asterinas: A Rust-based Linux-compatible Kernel Challenging Traditional Designs

Researchers from Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech) in China have developed Asterinas, a new Linux kernel written in Rust using a "framekernel" architecture. This architecture combines the advantages of monolithic and microkernels, encapsulating unsafe Rust code within a library while the rest of the kernel services use safe abstractions. This improves kernel safety while maintaining the high performance of monolithic kernels. Asterinas aims for a system with a small, formally verifiable TCB, Linux ABI compatibility, and a simple shared-memory architecture. Currently supporting x86 and RISC-V, Asterinas is under active development, with future plans to expand architecture support and cloud computing applications.