• Contact: tech-kern

IMPORTANT: This project was completed by Maxime Villard. You may still contact the people above for details, but please do not submit an application for this project.

Add a toolchain infrastructure that allows the kernel to be compiled as Position Independent Executable (PIE). Typically, having the kernel compiled as a kernel module itself - using the already-existing infrastructure - would be a good start. Then, some choices and proposals can be made to optimize performance of the kernel binary at the instruction level.

Deliverables:

• A set of Makefile changes that allow to build a PIE kernel at least on amd64 and i386.
• If possible, an evaluation of the performance cost.

It may be a little difficult to test the implementation, because the kernel won't boot. But as long as the kernel ELF binary is structurally correct it's fine.