AV ftp ftp.cs.city.ac.uk:papersangelangel-ov.ps

AV journal: "Parallel Computing: From Theory to Sound Practice".
Proceedings of EWPC'92, Barcelona
GP angel
MN March
YR 1992
PA 4
PL City University, London
TI Angel: A Proposed Multiprocessor Operating System Kernel

AU T. Wilkinson
AU T. Stiemerling
AU P. Osmon
AU A. Saulsbury
AU P. Kelly
RT technical report
LT TCUCS199210
OR CITY

AB We describe an operating system design for multiprocessor
systems called ANGEL, based on a single, coherent, uniform
virtual address space. This unifies naming and interprocess
communication in both shared and distributed memory
multiprocessors by using distributed shared memory techniques
when shared memory is not provided by the hardware. The design is
motivated by analysis of our earlier operating system
implementation, based on message passing, and we show how the
uniform address space attempts to solve problems with that
approach. In particular, we consider the use of client-server
cross-mapping to optimise interprocess commuinications, as used
in Bershad et al.'s lightweight RPC. This document describes
initial motivations for ANGEL and subsequent detailed design---we
will review and may modify many of the details described as the
design progresses.