Is the Microkernel Technology well suited for the Support
of Object-Oriented Operating Systems: the Guide Experience
R. Balter, P. Y. Chevalier, A. Freyssinet, D. Hagimont, S. Lacourte,
and X. Rousset de Pina
Unit Mixte Bull-IMAG/Systmes, 2 avenue de Vignate,
38610 Gires, France
Abstract
This paper describes our experience in the implementation of the Guide
distributed object-oriented system on top of the Mach 3.0 microkernel.
While many experimental distributed object-oriented environments have
been implemented on Unix and much less on a bare machine, the emerging
microkernel technology seems to provide a well suited trade-off
between these two approaches. Microkernels provide modularity and
flexibility for the design of a distributed operating system based on
the client-server architecture, support of lightweight processes,
efficient inter-process communication and the ability to implement
flexible memory management policies. The goal of this paper is to
provide an evaluation of the suitability of these features for the
construction of distributed object-oriented operating systems.
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