Micro-kernel Based Operating Systems: Moving UNIX onto Modern System Architectures
Michel Gien, Lori Grob, High-end Computer Architectures · 1992
characterized by multi-processor and distributed memory, High-volume, low-end systems are driving the pricing and gathering most of the attention of much of the industry, but the high-end systems are driving the technology innovations since the low-end systems are built from standard components. Those innovations in the high-end work their way down to the low end, just as multiprocessing, graphics, etc. have moved down to the PCs. Having a successful strategy in the high end is important for ensuring a continuing technology flow into the medium and low end systems. Many high-end open systems under development today are characterized by the innovative use of multiple processors in distributed memory configurations ("multicomputers"). These parallel processors provide wider I/O throughput for mainframe-power UNIX systems, redundancy for reliable OLTP systems and enormous computation power for massively parallel supercomputer systems. need a powerful operating system development environment, To build these systems, system builders need tools and services that will let them more easily integrate complex hardware architectures into high performance, reliable, distributed environments. To master these more complicated environments and get these more complicated machines to market faster, system builders need an operating system development environment that is as powerful as the development environment provided to applications builders by the UNIX system. The emphasis for such a development environment should be on two critical areas. First is enabling systems services which let the OS engineer focus on the specific high valued added features of the system and on the most efficient and flexible implementation of those features and not on how to shoe-horn those