unikernel
unikernel noun: a specialised, fixed-purpose machine image which can run directly on hardware or a hypervisor without an operating system such as Linux.
Noun
unikernel (plural unikernels)
- A specialised, fixed-purpose machine image which can run directly on hardware or a hypervisor without an operating system such as Linux.
- The general idea behind unikernel systems is not entirely new, as it builds up on top of the concept of library operating systems such as exokernel or Nemesis.2016, Bartok, David, Walt, Estee van der, Lindemann, Jan, Eschrig, Johannes, Plauth, Max, Proceedings of the Third HPI Cloud Symposium "Operating the Cloud" 2015, Universitätsverlag Potsdam, page 37
- In the unikernel approach, a developer selects a minimal set of libraries from a modular stack which correspond to the OS constructs required for their application to run.2017, Kai Hwang, Cloud Computing for Machine Learning and Cognitive Applications: A Machine Learning Approach, MIT Press, →ISBN, page 143
Forms of unikernel
| plural | unikernels |
|---|
Origin of unikernel
From uni- (“single-”) + kernel.
Questions about unikernel
- What does unikernel mean?
- Unikernel means a specialised, fixed-purpose machine image which can run directly on hardware or a hypervisor without an operating system such as Linux.
- What part of speech is unikernel?
- Unikernel is a noun.
- What is the plural of unikernel?
- The plural of unikernel is unikernels.
Words near unikernel in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: unikernel (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Cite this entry: “unikernel.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/unikernel. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.