The design of a distributed kernel for a multiprocessor system
Patrick D. Boyle · cIRcle (University of British Columbia) · 2010
The possibilities of increased responsiveness, throughput, availability, reliability and cost-effectiveness invite investigation of the hardware and software design of multiprocessor computing systems. This thesis describes an experiment in the design of a multiprocessor operating system based on the distribution of kernel functionality among the processors. One of the design objectives was to build a system capable of supporting real-time applications and a general-purpose, multi-user environment concurrently. The hardware base is a simple, closely-coupled, star network of autonomous computers constructed from "off-the-shelf" boards. The operating system developed, named Distributed Verex, is an extension of Verex which is a descendant of Thoth. The Verex kernel provides an environment of processes and inter-process communication via message-passing on a uniprocessor computer. Distributed Verex provides the same environment uniformly and transparently throughout the multiprocessor system. Distributed Verex has been implemented and is undergoing continuing development. Initial performance measurements are given.