The Microsoft Singularity 615
jose parinas writes ""Microsoft Research has published the first details of a wholly new operating system under development called Singularity, designed new from the ground up, built on a new language and designed with emphasis on dependability instead of performance.""
Re:another longhorn? (Score:4, Informative)
Come to think of it - has MS EVER written their own OS from scratch?
Go figure.
Re:MS-DOS 7.0 (Score:3, Informative)
Sorry, try again.
singularity on MS' channel 9 vlog (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Papers? (Score:5, Informative)
The Singularity project is run by top-notch researchers with very good reputations in the academic community. This is the real deal.
I think Slashdot has an acronym for things like the parent post... FUD, was it?
Re:another longhorn? (Score:3, Informative)
A few things they've come up with have been used (ClearType off the top of my head, and quite a few usability things, although I'm sure there's more), but it is quite disappointing that there's not been more — the quality and originality of the ideas that come out of Microsoft Research is really quite surprising.
Re:Oh, let me be the first to say it! (Score:2, Informative)
Also - just great - now my Google News Email Alerts for the "singularity" keyword will be poisoned with MS' chaff. Maybe next week they'll come out with a "Nanotech" brand mouse too.
They aren't the first (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Lack of Dynamic Loading (Score:5, Informative)
A quote from Galen Hunt (apparently someone working on it) from the Channel9 video page (I have to say I've not watched the video, at least yet, it's just interesting wherever developers actually reply to queries), says something about this:
I don't know if that directly answers your question, but I think it kinda explains how they're dealing with this sort of thing.
Re:Papers? (Score:5, Informative)
MSR isn't the first research group to think of using new language constructs to enforce security. Check out this paper on Asbestos [mit.edu], appearing at SOSP, for something similar. But one thing is certain: MSR has a large pool of talent and the money to push this research endeavor farther than any other company or academic institution could, and that is something exciting.
- shadowmatter
Me too (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Papers? (Score:3, Informative)
False. "Sponsored" by Microsoft means they donated money to it. It's a USENIX sponsored conference (which, if you're not aware, is an organization that sponsors highly respected systems conferences). It does not mean that Microsoft ran the show. Out of a 12 person committee [usenix.org], only two are from Microsoft Research.
Comment removed (Score:3, Informative)
And they are hiring ... (Score:4, Informative)
We are hiring! If you are interested in a full-time Researcher position, please email a C.V. or resume, a research statement, and the email addresses of three reference letter writers to Galen Hunt [microsoft.com]. You may also email copies of two publications you feel represent your best work. Minimum education requirement for a Researcher is a Ph.D. in Computer Science or equivalent.
To facilitate our hiring process, we strongly encourage interested fulltime researcher candidates to submit their application materials as soon as possible and preferably by February 15, 2006.
In evaluating candidates, we pay particular attention to demonstrated qualities of research taste, innovation, and first-hand system building. We value highly a proven research track record as demonstrated by strong publications in top venues.
If you are an exceptional Ph.D. candidate interested in a research internship, please use the MSR Internship Application [microsoft.com].
Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer and supports workforce diversity.
Re:another longhorn? (Score:3, Informative)
Err, Rhapsody was based off of OPENSTEP, which is based off NEXTSTEP, which is based off 4.2BSD (based off AT&T Unix 32V) and Mach from CMU. Mac OS X is based off of Rhapsody. Rhapsody was never released to the public, and the only reason why Rhapsody "failed" (i.e., Apple decided to abandon it and do a different approach with transforming OPENSTEP to OS X) is because Rhapsody would have forced developers to develop all of their applications for OPENSTEP APIs (now known as Cocoa). Developers didn't feel like re-writing all of their old Mac OS applications, so Apple had to spend the next few years developing Carbon (which contains much of the old Classic APIs, just updated for OS X).
Plan 9 is a new operating system, but much of it is based off the concepts of Unix. Plan 9 improves from Unix in many ways. It "failed" in the sense of doesn't have any market share, but Plan 9 wasn't about taking over the world. It is just a research project, and many of the concepts invented there (such as UTF-8 support and /proc) has been used in many other OSes and applications. Plan 9 has a very neat design and environment.
In a sense, all of the modern OSes that we use now are based off of a predecessor OS, either by sharing code or sharing concepts/functionality.
Direct Link to Microsoft PDF (Score:5, Informative)
Re:another longhorn? (Score:5, Informative)
Recently I heard a talk about the Windows kernel given by a guy from Microsoft. At the beginning of a talk, he said, "There are only two operating systems that matter." After the audience buzzed for a while, saying to eachother, "That jerk, Linux matters too!" or "That jerk, OS X matters too!" or "That jerk, BSD matters too!" He said something like, "You guys don't seem to like that, so what's the third?" One guy shouted out, "Windows!" The MS guy said, "Well, if you mean 'evil Windows', that is, Win95/98/ME, then it probably isn't even third. There are two operating systems that matter and they are Unix and VMS." He explained that for the most part ideas from VMS, rather than from Unix, shaped the design of the NT kernel. Looking at the Russinovich article, many of the things he lists as similarities are also similarities with Unix and many are similarities with any modern OS. Some, like the Object Manager, are specific to VMS and Windows. But overall, as long as DEC and MS came to some kind of agreement over any shared concepts or code, it's no knock on Microsoft, just as it's no knock on Linus for implementing a Unix-like OS. Better to borrow some things from a proven design and get a good product than to forge off on your own and make wierd mistakes.
Yay, 1979 Again! (Score:4, Informative)
In case you never heard of them, they are a mainframe based computing system that is used heavily in stock markets, banks and ATM devices. Basically in places where up-time and reliability is rather important. I personally don't like programming on them too much (COBOL anyone!..language with no stack...just wrong) but it can be a fun learning experience. At least there is a program called "OSH" that emulates the bash shell, rather poorly I'll admit...but nice for a guy like me anyways.
I guess a neat thing about Tandem, that also makes them awkward to use initially, is that they don't have a typical file structure. Everything is "Volumes" and you write all these "Servers"....just different. In the end, there is a one-to-one mapping of their file system to something most of us find traditional.
IMPORTANT (Score:4, Informative)
Look at page 31 of this PDF. Microsoft publish benchmark statistics showing Linux (and FreeBSD) to be better than Windows.
ftp://ftp.research.microsoft.com/pub/tr/TR-2005-1
Re:another longhorn? (Score:5, Informative)
No, it's written in Sing# which is an extension of Spec# which is an extension of C#. People really ought to pay more attention to Spec# - it's a nice extension of C# that allows for more formality if and when you require it. It's in the same class of language as SPARK [praxis-his.com] which is an extension of Ada, JML [iastate.edu] which extends Java with specification semantics, BitC [coyotos.org], Extended ML [ed.ac.uk], HasCASL [uni-bremen.de], and I guess to a lesser extent things like Eiffel [eiffel.com] and D [digitalmars.com].
Think of it this way: static types and type signatures for functions allow you to specify things about the software that the compiler can statically check and make sure there aren't any silly errors. The languages listed above (to varying degrees) allow for more exacting specification about the software, and hence you can (with the right tools) do far more comprehensive static checking and ensure various properties of the software. The difference is that, with most of these languages, the amount of specification is optional - you can be as exacting as you want where you need it, and not bother where you don't. It's like a dynamically typed language that lets you declare and use static types (and check them)just for those areas of code where it matters (except you start with static types and can provide more exacting specification where it matters). It's well worth checking out.
Jedidiah.
Yawn (Score:5, Informative)
I already wrote about this four days ago [pl.atyp.us] so I won't repeat the whole thing here. Short version:
Even shorter version: lots of great ideas, lots of work still to be done. Anybody with a clue about operating systems should be following this with interest.
Re:another longhorn? (Score:1, Informative)
It is true that if you compare the base-level architecture of VAX VMS to NT 3.1, you *will* see striking similarities, including the mutation of the RPC to an "LPC" using the precursor to Named Pipes in NT 3.1; however, as a former member of the NT 3.1 DevTeam under Ken Gregg and S. Somassegar I can make certain categorical statements:
1) There is no VMS code within NT, as far back as NT 3.1
2) The *only* bits of OS/2 that were included in NT 3.1 were for the OS/2 Subsystem to provide for the running of OS/2 Character-mode applications, just as there are POSIX bits to provide for NT 3.1's support for POSIX & POSIX-compliant applications.
3) NT was *not* developed from OS/2, but were developed in-parallel - which caused the rift between IBM and Microsoft and the dropping of Microsoft's involvement in OS/2.
4) "NT" stood for "New Technology", which is exactly what NT was within the PC Industry. The ideas may have migrated when Dave and his team moved to Microsoft from DEC, but NT was totally new from the ground up.
Regarding Mr. Russinovich's "analysis"; he's about as far off the target as the linux-fanboys make their yearly claim that "Linux will be fully accepted by regular computers users this year".
If you *really* want the whole story about NT and it's development, read "SHOWSTOPPER" - available at Amazon via this URL:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/002
Enjoy!
--ScottKin
Partial Summary and Comment (Score:4, Informative)
According to the benchmarks published there
- at most OS jobs like threading/process creation, Singularity is at least twice as fast as linux, Linux is very fast at process creation, while XP is good at threads
- in File Operations FreeBSD and Linux beat XP and Singularity at random reads
- in File Operations XP beats Linux and Singularity at sequential reads, with the exception of FreeBSD being fastest if blocksize is high(and very bad for small blocksize)
- linux executable size are larger than these of the other OSes, (whatever that means, more good coding, or less bad code SCNR)
Please bear in mind that a benchmark does not it tell whether the "slower" OS actually invested more time in doing some smart stuff that pays off in some other way.