The nucleus of an operating system. It is the closest part to the machine level and may activate the hardware directly or interface to another software layer that drives the hardware. The kernel orchestrates the entire operation of the computer by slicing time for each system function and each application as well as managing all the computer's resources. It typically resides in memory at all times. See microkernel, monolithic kernel, kernel space and kernel panic.
 | Reproduced with permission from Computer Desktop Encyclopedia. Copyright (c) 1981-2008 The Computer Language Company Inc. All rights reserved. |
Additional Resources
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