Operating System Directions for the Next Millennium
In his presentation, Rich Draves of Microsoft Research said that it is time to rethink the operating system design in light of the huge distributed system (a.k.a. the internet) that everyone is now connect to. In contrast to extensible systems, which allow bright people to do cool things, the goal of Rich and his colleagues is to allow average programmers to get involved in distributed systems. Their ultimate goal is to create a seamless system that will provide transparent distribution. A user of such a system would by a computer, and plug it into the network. The operating system would automatically be downloaded, would figure out what hardware resources were available to it, and would configure itself accordingly.
Extended Discussion
Other panelists:
- Bob Frankston (Microsoft) said
that large software systems should not be created, but rather should
evolve incrementally over time.
Extended Discussion
Slides
- Alan Nemeth (Digital Equipment
Corp.) observed that all software rots, and that it si vital that we
focus on ways of slowing this rot by providing better "hygiene."
Extended Discussion
- Dave Presotto (Bell Labs)
questioned some of the tradeoffs that systems such as Java and Inferno
have been making when they rely on software to provide protection
between applications, and incur large performance penalties for
something that existing memory management hardware can do much faster.
Extended Discussion
- Jim Waldo (JavaSoft) pointed out
that the real "consumers" of operating systems are application
developers, and provided a variety of suggestions for areas of
research that would be relevant to their concerns.
Extended Discussion
Slides
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