The Pisces framework dynamically decomposes a node’s hardware resources into multiple isolated partitions, each capable of supporting a fully independent and isolated OS environment. Each OS instance is referred to as an enclave and is dynamically constructed based on the runtime requirements of an application.

In order to avoid modifications to the host Linux environment, Pisce relies on the ability to offline resources in modern Linux kernels. The offline functionality allows a system administrator to remove a given resource from Linux’s allocators and subsystems while still leaving the resource physically accessible. By off-lining resources, pisces partitions Hardware by dynamically removing resources such as CPU cores, memory blocks and PCI devices from a running Linux kernel. Once a resource has been off-lined, a running co-kernel is allowed to assume direct control over it. In this way, both Linux and Pisces co-kernels are able to manage discontiguous sets of resources explicitly assigned to them.

Some of the design features provided by Pisces:

1. Elimination of cross OS dependencies.
2. Internalized management of I/O.
3. Cross enclave communication limited to explicit user-level shared memory segments.
4. Usage of virtualization techniques to provide missing OS features.