Re: Ada Microkernel?

["chris.danx" <chris.danx@ntlworld.com>]

> With some friends in France, we'd like to write our own micro kernel. The
> project has just started (6 month). The main goal is to provide a micro
> kernel like Mach or L4. After, it could be possible to write servers to make
> a more complete O.S. but at this time, it's not the subject.
>
> For the moment we try to status which microkernel model we gonna to take :
> Mach ou make a L4 clone in Ada ..
>
> Opinions ?


You might want to take a look at

http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~gribble/osprelims/summaries/Cache.html or
http://citeseer.nj.nec.com/cheriton94caching.html

which has a different micro-kernel concept.  It is a micro kernel but it's not
like mach.  Basically the "Cache kernel" only stores certain data for the
"Application Kernel", and hence is much simpler.  The Application Kernel is
another kernel (a little simpler) which does a lot of the work.  Since you can
have many application kernels you can effectively have Windows applications
running on a compatible Windows Application Kernel and Unix applications running
in a Unix Application Kernel.  The scheme doesn't limit you to one application
kernel and offers great flexibility.  You can still write Mach or L4 compatible
app kernels and whatever other kernel you like.

There was one project that was going to do a cache kernel called Freedows but it
seems to have suffered a slow painful death.  I don't think it was the cache
kernel that did it, just that they had too many developers who couldn't agree on
anything.

You may also want to subscribe to alt.os.development and alt.os.assembly as ther
are lots of knowledgable folks working on OSes there.


Chris Campbell