Singularity A brief introduction to Microsofts newest operating

Singularity A brief introduction to Microsoft’s newest operating system.

Introduction • Designed from scratch by Microsoft Research – Team Leaders • Galen Hunt (OS background) • Jim Larus (Programming Languages Background)

Overview • • Design Goals Kernel Architecture Processes Interprocess Communication

Design Goals • Designed strictly for dependability not performance. • Research OS • Based on Software advances not hardware advances

Kernel Architecture • Singularity uses a Micro-Kernel • Process interact using a strongly versioned Application Binary Interface • Memory divided into three parts – Kernel space, User space, and Exchange Heap • Context Switching time greatly reduced

Processes • Software Isolated Process – No shared memory – No memory hardware protection – Code must be verifiably correct • A process cannot dynamically load or generate code.

Interprocess Communication • Communication through Strongly Typed Channels • Communication is governed by Channel contracts • All interprocess communication occurs in Exchange Heap.

Channel Contract • specify message types and valid message exchanges contract C 1 { in message Request(int x) requires x>0; out message Reply(int y); out message Error(); // Initial State state Start: Request? -> (Reply! or Error!) -> Start; }

References • Hunt, G. , Larus, J. , Abadi, M. , Aiken, M. , Barham, P. , Fahndrich, M. , Hawblizel, C. , Hodson, O. , Levi, S. , Murphy, N. , Steensgaard, B. , Tarditi, D. , Wobber, T. , Zill, B. (2005). An Overview of the Singularity Project. Redmond, WA: Microsoft Cooperation. Microsoft Research Technical Report; MST-TR-135. • Hunt, G. , Larus, J. (2004). Singularity Technical Report 1: Singularity Design Motivation. Redmond, WA: Microsoft Cooperation. Microsoft Research Technical Report; MST-TR-105. • Mooney, Paul (2005). “Singularity OS. ” URL: http: //dotnetjunkies. com/weblog/paul/archive/2005/10/30/133490. aspx • Foley, Mary (2005). “Microsoft’s Other OS. ” URL: http: //www. microsoft-watch. com/article 2/0, 2180, 1882174, 00. asp

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