The design and implementation of a prototype exokernel operating system

Thesis (M.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 1996.Includes bibliographical references (p. 99-106).by Dawson R. Engler.M.S

Meeting the Application in User Space

INTRODUCTION Today's operating systems still offer a static interface, not designed for customization by the application programmer. At the same time, application requirements are getting more and more specific, demanding higher flexibility from the underlying system. Emerging needs are, in particular, adequate support for concurrency, distribution, and persistence. However, there seems to be no commonly accepted single interface satisfying every kind of user application. Rather than trying to meet diverse user requirements by further broadening existing interfaces, a more suitable approach is to supply highly customizable operating system services [5]. These services should be accessible in user-space like any application-specific service in the chosen programming model. For example, in an object-oriented programming model, the programmer should be able to apply inheritance to existing classes of operating system objects. Such flexible access to existing primitives enables e