ken@dm.unibo.it (05/08/90)
Readers of comp.os.research who are doing experimental research on distributed software, or developing distributed applications and products, may be interested in a new release of the ISIS system now available from my group at Cornell. ISIS V2.0 is an extended version of the ISIS Toolkit, and is used to build distributed and fault-tolerant application software under UNIX and MACH systems on diverse host hardware. The V2.0 release will run on HP, SUN and DEC equipment and a port to IBM's new AIX Risc processor is underway. Other near-term ports include Cray UNICOS and IBM's VM system under CMS. Application software can be built using C, Gnu-C, C++/G++, Common Lisp and Fortran. Data representation converstions and so forth are hidden from users. V2.0 of ISIS is much faster than previous versions of the system and is a suitable base for demanding distributed applications, fault-tolerant servers, and for experimental work on high performance multicast transport protocols. The protocols layer of the system is user extensible. A number of new tools and applications are included with the system, including facilities for WAN communication and for building very large LAN systems in which only a small subset of the machines run ISIS directly. In this latter configuration, the ISIS overhead on "remote client" machines will be very low. Each "mother" machine can be concentrator to very large numbers of remote clients. This permits the toolkit to be used by hundreds of machines without any major administrative headaches or need to share file systems and so forth. Email to isis@cs.cornell.edu to request information on the system. The project secretary, Maureen Robinson, can provide copies of the manual, reprints of technical papers and brief overviews, and can make tapes of the latest release. FTP access to the system source is available via UUNET, EUNET (mcsun.eu.net), and from a file server at Cornell. There are no fees unless you purchase the manual in hard-copy form or need a tape, cassette, or floppy diskette, in which cases we pass along expenses. We now have distributed hundreds of copies of the system and have an active user community that numbers in the hundreds and spans everything from academic research to commercial product development and sales. Support for ISIS V2.0 will be available from ISIS Distributed Systems Inc. (email to me for info). comp.sys.isis is our newsgroup for most ISIS-related postings. -- Ken Birman