A. Vichare. (2011)cite arxiv:1112.4451Comment: 31 pages, 4 figures. To be submitted.
Abstract
While the engineering of operating systems is well understood, their formal
structure and properties are not. The latter needs a clear definition of the
purpose of an OS and an identification of the core. In this paper I offer
definitions of the OS, processes and files, and present a few useful
principles. The principles allow us to identify work like closure and
continuation algorithms, in programming languages that is useful for the OS
problem. The definitions and principles should yield a symbolic, albeit
semiquantitative, framework that encompasses practice. Towards that end I
specialise the definitions to describe conventional OSes and identify the core
operations for a single computer OS that can be used to express their
algorithms. The assumptions underlying the algorithms offer the design space
framework. The paging and segmentation algorithms for conventional OSes are
extracted from the framework as a check. Among the insights the emerge is that
an OS is a constructive proof of equivalence between models of computation.
Clear and useful definitions and principles are the first step towards a fully
quantitative structure of an OS.
%0 Generic
%1 Vichare2011
%A Vichare, Abhijat
%D 2011
%K computing operating_systems os
%T What is an OS?
%U http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/1112/1112.4451v1.pdf
%X While the engineering of operating systems is well understood, their formal
structure and properties are not. The latter needs a clear definition of the
purpose of an OS and an identification of the core. In this paper I offer
definitions of the OS, processes and files, and present a few useful
principles. The principles allow us to identify work like closure and
continuation algorithms, in programming languages that is useful for the OS
problem. The definitions and principles should yield a symbolic, albeit
semiquantitative, framework that encompasses practice. Towards that end I
specialise the definitions to describe conventional OSes and identify the core
operations for a single computer OS that can be used to express their
algorithms. The assumptions underlying the algorithms offer the design space
framework. The paging and segmentation algorithms for conventional OSes are
extracted from the framework as a check. Among the insights the emerge is that
an OS is a constructive proof of equivalence between models of computation.
Clear and useful definitions and principles are the first step towards a fully
quantitative structure of an OS.
@misc{Vichare2011,
abstract = { While the engineering of operating systems is well understood, their formal
structure and properties are not. The latter needs a clear definition of the
purpose of an OS and an identification of the core. In this paper I offer
definitions of the OS, processes and files, and present a few useful
principles. The principles allow us to identify work like closure and
continuation algorithms, in programming languages that is useful for the OS
problem. The definitions and principles should yield a symbolic, albeit
semiquantitative, framework that encompasses practice. Towards that end I
specialise the definitions to describe conventional OSes and identify the core
operations for a single computer OS that can be used to express their
algorithms. The assumptions underlying the algorithms offer the design space
framework. The paging and segmentation algorithms for conventional OSes are
extracted from the framework as a check. Among the insights the emerge is that
an OS is a constructive proof of equivalence between models of computation.
Clear and useful definitions and principles are the first step towards a fully
quantitative structure of an OS.
},
added-at = {2011-12-20T15:10:07.000+0100},
author = {Vichare, Abhijat},
biburl = {https://www.bibsonomy.org/bibtex/273eeda45b8872f028f7b37bf3be8db90/maxirichter},
description = {What is an OS?},
interhash = {ca92c103fa92bcb2d2fa6d115939c946},
intrahash = {73eeda45b8872f028f7b37bf3be8db90},
keywords = {computing operating_systems os},
note = {cite arxiv:1112.4451Comment: 31 pages, 4 figures. To be submitted},
timestamp = {2012-01-14T20:39:16.000+0100},
title = {What is an OS?},
url = {http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/1112/1112.4451v1.pdf},
year = 2011
}