Date: Sat, 20 Jun 1998 17:23:15 -0500 (EST) From: "John S. Dyson" <dyson@iquest.net> To: current@FreeBSD.ORG, hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Here is what I promised :-) Message-ID: <199806202223.RAA05437@dyson.iquest.net>
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Gang: This is to follow up on my promise for a more formal goodbye. I have worked on FreeBSD for quite a while, trying to push the envelope of the existing kernel structure. While there is still *some* room for growth in the current structure, there are also problems that exist in *every* conventional kernel out there: (Linux, *BSD, etc...) I didn't want to say my formal goodbye until I was sure that I had something good to say about the new works that I and certain other individuals have been developing. With all of the other stuff out of the way, I am definitely still in the OS world. Think of what I am doing now as the time that we will be "off in the corner" thinking about solving the problems that we have learned about when working on FreeBSD, and reviewing the competition. In the same way there were long periods when FreeBSD was being worked on, but changes and modifications weren't ready for public consumption (in fact, alot of the work that I was doing when I left, is frozen due to it not being ready yet), this new project is in that mode today. There is alot of technology out there that solves the existant problems in a way different than conventional techniques. The different technology sometimes has its own new set of problems, and the challenge that we have taken on is to solve the existant conventional kernel problems, without making the solution impractical due to its own failings. It appears that we have found a direction that will apparently bear very sweet fruit, with few bitter seeds. The technology is significantly different from existing kernel structures, and has fault tolerant aspects that are almost impossible to imagine in a conventional setting. The design and concept phase is progressing rapidly, and an initial structure will likely be complete soon. It should be bootable, but not complete (from an API point of view), in the next month or so. The API and emulation support should be showing signs of life, soon after the initial booting. Entire subsystems should port into the then-existing structure, with some robustness against subsystem failure, and suprisingly little change. The kernel itself provides an amount of support that simplifies the number and type of abstractions, while being able to support all of the traditional abstractions to userland. The spectre of total transparency of CPU and machine boundaries with robustness is becoming very clear with this new structure. There is even the goal (and practicality) of *some* transparency in a heterogeneous network also. In no way is efficiency going to be significantly compromised, and in fact, there will likely be areas where efficiency is suprisingly good. So, that is also kind-of an early status report of the progress on the new project. I believe that this will become a significant forward force in free kernel design and flexibility. That certainly doesn't take away from what the current kernels are today, but after spending enough time trying to answer problems, it became clear to me that the answers that we were getting may have been correct, but the wrong questions were being asked. I hope to have contributed to something soon that will not compete with any OSes, but will be a useful adjunct and represent a capability that until now, hasn't been very practical or efficient. John To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message
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