How transparent could the deployment target choice be? Could you deploy roughly the same source code to unikernel and non unikernel targets? Also, what exactly are these enormous performance benefits?
About the source code, all I can really say is that's our aim at the moment - to have the same source compiled for both non-unikernel and UKL targets. Note that really what we're aiming for is to recompile common servers out of the box with no changes, or the minimal changes possible.
Performance benefits: In truth we're still measuring this, there is a very smart student at BU who is investigating this and coming up with results for a forthcoming paper which I don't want to preempt too much. Almost all applications should see a small benefit, say of the order of 5%, but it's hoped that some will see a much larger benefit, and that it should be possible to make modest modifications in order to enjoy large benefits (perhaps only compiler and linker flags and such like).
These are very much hopes rather than firm promises at the moment.
