Unikernels are the smallest lightweight virtual machines (VMs) one can create: they are VMs where there is no traditional operating system running underneath the application; instead, the application is compiled against bits of OS functionality that it needs, resulting in a very small app+OS bundle.
Developing applications with unikernels is a manual process today requiring significant expert resources, which prevents them from being widely used by the software industry. UNICORE will enable standard developers and dev-ops engineers to create, maintain and deploy unikernels with ease.
UNICORE will build the toolstack under the umbrella of the nascent Unikraft Xen subproject under the auspices of the Linux Foundation. Unikraft focuses on easing the creation of building unikernels, which compile source code into a lean operating system that only includes the functionality required by the application logic.
We encourage you to try the Unikraft Tutorial and build your first Unikernel!