CALTON@CS.COLUMBIA.EDU (Calton Pu) (05/03/87)
The Synthesis System Abstract The Synthesis distributed operating system combines efficient kernel calls with a high-level, orthogonal interface. The key idea is the use of a code synthesizer in the kernel to generate specialized (thus short and fast) kernel routines for specific situations. For example, opening a file returns code to read and write that specific file. As a result, the Synthesis kernel call that reads one byte from /dev/mem takes about fifteen microseconds on a 68020 machine. The kernel interface is based on a simple model of computation called a synthetic machine, which consists of six operations on four kinds of objects. This combination of a high-level interface with the code synthesizer avoids the traditional trade-off in operating systems between powerful interfaces and efficient implementations. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ We have a tech report describing the reasons why code synthesis wins big, plus the simple model of computation and its orthogonal interface. Requests may be sent to calton@cs.columbia.edu or massalin@cs.columbia.edu. -Calton- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------