Dedicated, distributed and portable operating systems: A structuring concept
G. Valdorf · Software Practice and Experience · 1984
Abstract Primarily economic reasons have created a growing need for the development of operating systems providing support for existing and newly developed structurally different hardware systems–‐operating systems which (a) implement functionally different problem‐oriented solutions without imposing the need of developing problem‐invariant functions repeatedly (‘operating system family’) (b) work not only in a local environment, but also co‐operate with one another in an interconnected hardware system, thus appearing to the user as only one big operating system (c) are portable among structurally different hardware systems independent of one another (‘autonomous systems’), as well as among structurally different interconnected hardware systems (‘networks’) We present some principles of a structuring concept which seems to be a suitable means of developing operating systems with the specified characteristics in an economic and controlled manner.