Microsoft Singularity Now "Open" Source

Alex_Ionescu writes "Microsoft's Singularity operating system (covered previously by Slashdot) is now open to the public for download, under a typical Microsoft academic, non-commercial license. Inside is a fully compilable and bootable version of what could be the basis for the future of Windows, or maybe simply an experiment to demonstrate .NET's capabilities. Singularity, if you'll recall, has gained wide interest from researchers and users alike, by claiming to be a fully managed code kernel (with managed code drivers and applications as well), something that would finally revolutionize the operating system research arena. The project is available on CodePlex."

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Software Isolated Processes

[parvenu74]

Singularity, if you'll recall, has gained wide interest from researchers and users alike, by claiming to be a fully managed code kernel (with managed code drivers and applications as well), something that would finally revolutionize the operating system research arena. The impression I got by looking at what was known about the project a year ago is that it was of lesser interest that the OS was written in managed code and it was far more interesting that they had solved some problems of inter-process communication in a micro-kernel OS. As you can read at Wikipedia:

Singularity is a microkernel operating system; however, unlike most historical microkernels, the different components do not run in separate address spaces (processes). Instead, there is only a single address space in which "Software-Isolated Processes" (SIP) reside. Each SIP has its own data and code layout, and is independent from other SIPs. These SIPs behave like normal processes, but do not require the overhead penalty of task-switches. Protection in this system is provided by a set of invariants, such as the memory-invariant which states there will be no cross-references (or memory pointers) between two SIPs. Communication between SIPs occur via higher order communication channels managed by the operating system. These rules are checked during the installation phase of the application, and must be fulfilled in order for Singularity to allow the installation (note: in Singularity, installation is managed by the operating system). The promise of Singularity, as I understood it, was the possibility of constructing an O/S kernel with all of the modularity advantages of a microkernel without all of the process communication issues typical to this kernel type.