Sunday, December 11, 2005
Singularity or Similarity?
A current research project at Microsoft attempts to answer this question:
What would a software platform look like if it was designed from scratch with the primary goal of dependability?
Dependability is defined as a system consistently working as expected with a high degree of predictability. That is, something that "just works."
The output of this project is a new system architecture and operating system called "Singularity." Details are published at http://research.microsoft.com/os/singularity.
One of the key elements of Singularity is strong process isolation, achieved in part using an abstract instruction set, a trusted compiler, and memory independence between processes, which is based on a single virtual address space.
As stated by a colleague, "sounds kind of familiar, doesn't it. :-)"
What would a software platform look like if it was designed from scratch with the primary goal of dependability?
Dependability is defined as a system consistently working as expected with a high degree of predictability. That is, something that "just works."
The output of this project is a new system architecture and operating system called "Singularity." Details are published at http://research.microsoft.com/os/singularity.
One of the key elements of Singularity is strong process isolation, achieved in part using an abstract instruction set, a trusted compiler, and memory independence between processes, which is based on a single virtual address space.
As stated by a colleague, "sounds kind of familiar, doesn't it. :-)"
