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Observations on the development of an operating system

Author:

Hugh C. LauerAuthors Info & Claims

ACM SIGOPS Operating Systems Review, Volume 15, Issue 5

Pages 30 - 36

https://doi.org/10.1145/1067627.806588

Published: 01 December 1981 Publication History

Abstract

The development of Pilot, an operating system for a personal computer, is reviewed, including a brief history and some of the problems and lessons encountered during this development. As part of understanding how Pilot and other operating systems come about, an hypothesis is presented that systems can be classified into five kinds according to the style and direction of their development, independent of their structure. A further hypothesis is presented that systems such as Pilot, and many others in widespread use, take about five to seven years to reach maturity, independent of the quality and quantity of the talent applied to their development. The pressures, constraints, and problems of producing Pilot are discussed in the context of these hypotheses.

References

[1]

Belady, L. A., and Lehman, M. M., 'A model of large program development.' IBM System Journal, no. 3, 1976.

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[2]

Bensoussan, A., Clingen, C. T., and Daley, R. C., 'The MULTICS Virtual Memory: Concepts and Design,' Communications of the ACM, vol 15, no 5, May 1972, pp 308-318.

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[3]

Deutsch, L. P. and Taft, E. A., 'Requirements for an Experimental Programming Environment,' report # CSL-80-10, Xerox Corporation, Palo Alto Research Center, Palo Alto, 1980.

[4]

The Dorado: A High-performance Personal Computer, Three Papers. Technical Report CSL-81-1, Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, Palo Alto, California, January 1981.

[5]

Geschke, C. M., Morris, J. H., and Satterthwaite, E. H., 'Early Experience with Mesa.' Communications of the ACM, vol. 20, no, 8, August 1977

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Hoare, C. A. R., 'The Emperor's Old Clothes,' (1980 ACM Turing Award Lecture), Communications of the ACM, vol. 24, no. 2, February 1981.

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Lampson, B. W., 'Dynamic protection structures,' Proceedings of the AFIPS Fall Joint Computer Conference, 1969, pp 27-38. (Note: The Berkeley Computer Corporation was a widely publicized venture by a number of respected computer scientists to build a major time-sharing system and utility in 1968-1970. I can find no references to it in the literature except this one, which is mostly about the operating system structure.)

[8]

Lampson, B. W. and Redell, D. D., 'Experience with Processes and Monitors in Mesa,' Communications of the ACM, vol. 23, no. 2, February 1980.

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Lampson, B. W. and Sturgis, H. E., 'Reflections on an Operating System Design.' Communications of the ACM, vol. 19, no. 5, May 1976.

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Lauer, H.C. and Needham, R.M., 'On the Duality of Operating System Structures,' Proc. Second International Symposium on Operating Systems, IRIA, Oct. 1978, reprinted in Operating Systems Review. vol. 13, no 2, April 1979, pp 3-19.

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Lauer, H. C. and Satterthwaite, E. H., 'Impact of Mesa on System Design,' Proceedings of Fourth International Conference on Software Engineering, Munich, September 1979, pp 174-182.

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[12]

Mitchell, J. G., Maybury, W. and Sweet, R., Mesa Language Manual report # CSL-79-3, Xerox Corporation, Palo Alto Research Center, Palo Alto, California, 1979.

[13]

Redell, D.D., Dalal, Y. K., Horsley, T.R., Lauer. H.C., Lynch, W. C. McJones, P. R., Murray, H. G., Purcell, S. C., 'Pilot: An Operating System for a Personal Computer,' Communications of the ACM, vol. 23, no. 2, February 1980.

Digital Library

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Ritchie, D. M. and Thompson, K., 'The UNIX Time-Sharing System,' Communications of the ACM, vol. 17, no. 7, July 1974.

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Sproull, R. F. and Lampson, B. W., 'An open operating system for a single-user machine,' Proceeding of the Seventh Symposium on Operating System Principles, Asilomar, December 1979.

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Cited By

Chang AMergen M(1988)801 storage: architecture and programmingACM Transactions on Computer Systems10.1145/35037.422706:1(28-50)Online publication date: 1-Feb-1988
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/35037.42270
Thain DTannenbaum TLivny M(2005)Distributed computing in practice: the Condor experienceConcurrency and Computation: Practice and Experience10.1002/cpe.93817:2-4(323-356)Online publication date: 7-Feb-2005
https://doi.org/10.1002/cpe.938
Curry GAyers R(1984)Experience with Traits in the Xerox Star WorkstationIEEE Transactions on Software Engineering10.1109/TSE.1984.501027610:5(519-527)Online publication date: 1-Sep-1984
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/TSE.1984.5010276

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Information

Published In

cover image ACM SIGOPS Operating Systems Review

ACM SIGOPS Operating Systems Review Volume 15, Issue 5

December 1981

189 pages

ISSN:0163-5980

DOI:10.1145/1067627

Issue’s Table of Contents

SOSP '81: Proceedings of the eighth ACM symposium on Operating systems principles
December 1981
189 pages
ISBN:0897910621
DOI:10.1145/800216
Chairmen:
John Howard,
David P. Reed

Copyright © 1981 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 01 December 1981

Published in SIGOPS Volume 15, Issue 5

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Cited By

Chang AMergen M(1988)801 storage: architecture and programmingACM Transactions on Computer Systems10.1145/35037.422706:1(28-50)Online publication date: 1-Feb-1988
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/35037.42270
Thain DTannenbaum TLivny M(2005)Distributed computing in practice: the Condor experienceConcurrency and Computation: Practice and Experience10.1002/cpe.93817:2-4(323-356)Online publication date: 7-Feb-2005
https://doi.org/10.1002/cpe.938
Curry GAyers R(1984)Experience with Traits in the Xerox Star WorkstationIEEE Transactions on Software Engineering10.1109/TSE.1984.501027610:5(519-527)Online publication date: 1-Sep-1984
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/TSE.1984.5010276

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