Operating System Structures

A microkernel and its communication with the user space: the responsibilities for application program, the file system, and the device driver belong to the user space now: the only responsibilities that the kernel space keeps are interprocess communication, memory management, and cpu scheduling. Due to this reduction in the kernel's tasks, the kernel's code is shorter, so it's called a microkernel because of its small size.

A microkernel and its communication with the user space. Taken from Bell, John T. "Operating-System Structures." University of Illinois, Chicago..

These notes by Miriam Briskman are licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0 and based on sources.