Asterinas: A Linux ABI-Compatible, Rust-Based Framekernel OS with a Small and Sound TCB
Abstract
How can one build a feature-rich, general-purpose, Rust-based operating system (OS) with a minimal and sound Trusted Computing Base (TCB) for memory safety? Existing Rust-based OSes fall short due to their improper use of unsafe Rust in kernel development. To address this challenge, we propose a novel OS architecture called framekernel that realizes Rust's full potential to achieve intra-kernel privilege separation, ensuring TCB minimality and soundness. We present OSTD, a streamlined framework for safe Rust OS development, and Asterinas, a Linux ABI-compatible framekernel OS implemented entirely in safe Rust using OSTD. Supporting over 210 Linux system calls, Asterinas delivers performance on par with Linux, while maintaining a minimized, memory-safety TCB of only about 14.0% of the codebase. These results underscore the practicality and benefits of the framekernel architecture in building safe and efficient OSes.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2506.03876,
title = {Asterinas: A Linux ABI-Compatible, Rust-Based Framekernel OS with a Small and Sound TCB},
author = {Yuke Peng and Hongliang Tian and Zhang Junyang and Ruihan Li and Chengjun Chen and Jianfeng Jiang and Jinyi Xian and Xiaolin Wang and Chenren Xu and Diyu Zhou and Yingwei Luo and Shoumeng Yan and Yinqian Zhang},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2506.03876},
year = {2025}
}