hybrid kernel

Hybrid kernels are a compromise between the monolithic and microkernel designs.

A few advantages to the modular (or) Hybrid kernel are:

These are called hybrid kernels.

Windows NT was the first Windows operating system based on a hybrid kernel.

The Windows NT kernel is known as a hybrid kernel.

The hybrid kernel design compromises between the flexibility of a microkernel and the performance of a monolithic kernel.

A hybrid kernel is a kernel architecture based on combining aspects of microkernel and monolithic kernel architectures used in computer operating systems.

The operating system is designed to combine certain elements of a monolithic kernel and a microkernel; nowadays this is most often referred to as a hybrid kernel.

Other monolithic and hybrid kernels, like Linux and Windows NT, are also susceptible to malfunctioning drivers impeding the kernel's operation.

Mac OS X and NeXTSTEP use hybrid kernels based on Mach.

DragonFly BSD (first non-Mach BSD OS to use a hybrid kernel)

They also generally use a monolithic kernel architecture, apart from Mac OS X and DragonFly BSD which feature hybrid kernels.

Hybrid kernels are micro kernels that have some "non-essential" code in kernel-space in order for the code to run more quickly than it would were it to be in user-space.

The Haiku kernel is a modular hybrid kernel and a fork of NewOS, a modular kernel written by former Be Inc. engineer Travis Geiselbrecht.

NEXTSTEP used a hybrid kernel that combined the Mach 2.5 kernel developed at Carnegie Mellon University with subsystems from 4.3BSD.

Against this, Mac OS X is based on Darwin, which uses a hybrid kernel called XNU, which was created combining the 4.3BSD kernel and the Mach kernel.

Apple Inc's own Mac OS X uses a hybrid kernel called XNU which is based upon code from Carnegie Mellon's Mach kernel and FreeBSD's monolithic kernel.

The architecture of Windows NT's kernel is considered a hybrid kernel because the kernel itself contains tasks such as the Window Manager and the IPC Managers, with a client/server layered subsystem model.

By contrast, OS X inherited from NeXTSTEP the hybrid kernel called XNU, wherein the BSD kernel personality is grafted atop Mach, and they run together in a single kernel address space.

Modular monolithic operating systems are not to be confused with the architectural level of modularity inherent in Server-Client operating systems (and its derivatives sometimes marketed as hybrid kernel) which use microkernels and servers (not to be mistaken for modules or daemons).

Darwin is built around XNU, a hybrid kernel that combines the Mach 3 microkernel, various elements of BSD (including the process model, network stack, and virtual file system), and an object-oriented device driver API called I/O Kit.

The best known example of a hybrid kernel is the Microsoft NT kernel that powers all operating systems in the Windows NT family, up to and including Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012, and powers Windows Phone 8.