Multikernel Linux Tree Released: Runs Multiple Kernels On Bare Metal Without a Hypervisor

The useful part

"Multikernel Technologies has put out mklinux v7.0-mk2, the first public release of the multikernel Linux tree it's been building since last year," reports the blog It's FOSS: The basic premise of the project is that one physical server can run several independent Linux kernels side by side, each with its own dedicated CPUs and memory. So, the same box could run a database on one kernel and a GPU training job on another without either kernel touching the other's resources...

How it works

• This release only supports x86_64 hardware, though Multikernel Technologies says the architecture-specific code is already modular enough for other ports to follow later.
• One kernel runs as the host, controlling the machine's CPUs, memory, and PCI devices.
• When it spins up a new kernel instance, that instance gets its own dedicated slice of hardware and boots straight onto it using Linux's kexec mechanism, running natively rather than under a hypervisor.
• The host tracks all of this through device tree overlays under /sys/fs/multikernel/, and it can shift hardware between running instances while everything stays up.
• A VM still puts a hypervisor and a host kernel between the app and the hardware.

What to take from it

A container skips the hypervisor, but every tenant on the machine shares one kernel...

Details worth keeping

The article notes they're selling multiple products based on the kernel tree, including one for running AI agents in their own kernel with direct GPU access and one that promises to patch a running kernel without taking the system down.