The benefits and costs of writing a POSIX kernel in a high-level language
An unoptimized research kernel using GC (instead of ref-counting or Rust-style lifetimes) manages to get within 5-15% of a traditional kernel for the things they measured. That is impressive.<p>Lots of asterisks and caveats apply I'm sure, but it bolsters the argument that writing kernels and device drivers in a high-level safe language wouldn't impose the 2x or worse perf penalty detractors like to claim. I know I'd trade 10% perf for the elimination of whole classes of security vulnerabilities.<p>(For the same reason, I want the standards committee to produce a bounds-checked dialect of C where I can choose to pay some perf cost to get real dynamic and bounds-checked arrays)