green@vis.toronto.edu (Anthony Thomas Green) (05/03/91)
I was just reading an article in this weeks PC Week magazine about Microsoft's OS/2 3.0 (to be released Real Soon Now). It sounds like they have pulled a few pages out of Mach's book for this one... "...OS/2 3.0's core component is the Executive, a kernel that performs memory management, process and thread management, and synchronization between multiple processors. On top of the Executive is a set of protected subsystems that provide the necessary services to run a mix of applications, including Windows, OS/2 and POSIX programs." OS/2 3.0 is designed to be mostly hardware independent for easy ports to different machines. Am I crazy or does this sound exactly like Mach? Anthony Green green@vis.toronto.edu
bp@cs.brown.edu (Boris Putanec) (05/03/91)
In article <91May2.133443edt.8766@orasis.vis.toronto.edu> green@vis.toronto.edu (Anthony Thomas Green) writes:
"...OS/2 3.0's core component is the Executive, a kernel that performs
memory management, process and thread management, and synchronization
between multiple processors.
On top of the Executive is a set of protected subsystems that provide
the necessary services to run a mix of applications, including Windows,
OS/2 and POSIX programs."
OS/2 3.0 is designed to be mostly hardware independent for easy ports to
different machines.
Am I crazy or does this sound exactly like Mach?
Actually, it sounds exactly like Chorus. Protected subsystems
(supervisor actors) is a feature of Chorus used to implement servers
that exist in the system address space. This allows a subsystem to
provide a trap interface to the outside world. Incidentally, Chours
also calls their core component the Executive.
Interestingly enough, OS/2 3.0 seems to lack IPC as a fundamental
service. IPC plays a major role throughout the design and
implementation of both Chorus and Mach. I wonder how Microsoft is
going to do it.
If anyone is interested in getting Chorus information, here is a blurb
from one of their README files,
The following papers/reports describing the Chorus Micro-kernel, its
distributed, multi-server version of Unix (MiX), and a few sundry items,
are available via anonymous FTP from two sites:
For Europe (or if it's closest) from Chorus systemes in France
opera.chorus.fr
192.33.15.3
in directory pub/chorus-reports
For the USA (or if it's closest) from Oregon Graduate Institute
in the USA
cse.ogi.edu
129.95.10.2
in directory pub/chorus-reports
boris
bp@cs.brown.edu