CUSTOMIZED EXECUTION ENVIRONMENT AND OPERATING SYSTEM CAPABLE OF SUPPORTING SAME

Operating system methods and techniques for supporting one or more custom execution environments (CE2s) are provided. According to one embodiment, a determination is made with respect to which system resources of a computer system, if any, are to remain under control of a resident operating system of the computer system and which of the system resources are to be placed under control of one or more CE2s. The system resources are then partitioned among the resident operating system and the one or more CE2s by associating one or more partitions of the system resources with the one or more CE2s. Such partitioning may be performed by the resident operating system by employing hardware-based isolation techniques provided by a processor of the computer system, performed by the resident operating system by employing a secure-platform interface, or configured by a system administrator via hardware partitioning capability provided by the computer system platform.