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Episode 88: The Singularity Research OS with Galen Hunt

Episode 88: The Singularity Research OS with Galen Hunt

Software Engineering Radio - The Podcast for Professional Software Developers vor 18 Jahren

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46:35

In this episode we talk to Galen Hunt about the Singularity
research OS. Galen is the head of Microsoft's OS Research Group
and, together with a team of about 30 other researches, has built
Singularity. We started our discussion by covering the basics of
Singularity: why it was designed, what the goals of the project are
as well as some of the architectural foundations of Singularity:
software isolated processes, contract-based channels and
manifest-based programs. In this context we also looked at the role
of the Spec# and Sing# programming languages and the role of static
analysis tools to statically verify important properties of a
singularity application. We then looked a little bit more closely
at the role of the kernel and how it is different from kernels in
traditional OSes. In a second part of the discussion we looked at
some of the experiments the group did based on the OS. These
include compile-time reflection, using hardware protection domains,
heterogenerous multiprocessing as well as the typed assembly
language We closed the conversation with a look at some of the
performance characteristics of Singularity, compatibility with
traditional operating systems and a brief look at how the findings
from Singularity influence product development at Microsoft.