K42 is an open-source research operating system for cache-coherent 64-bit multiprocessor systems. It was developed primarily at IBM TJ Watson Research Center in collaboration with University of Toronto and University of New Mexico. The main focus of this OS is to address performance and scalability issues of system software on large-scale, shared memory, NUMA multiprocessor computers. It has been suggested that Open source culture be merged into this article or section. ... An operating system (OS) is a set of computer programs that manage the hardware and software resources of a computer. ... International Business Machines Corporation (known as IBM or Big Blue; NYSE: IBM) is a multinational computer technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, USA. The company is one of the few information technology companies with a continuous history dating back to the 19th century. ... The University of Toronto (U of T) is a coeducational public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. ... The University of New Mexico (UNM) is a public university in Albuquerque, New Mexico. ... In computer hardware, shared memory refers to a (typically) large block of random access memory that can be accessed by several different central processing units (CPUs) in a multiple-processor computer system. ... Non-Uniform Memory Access or Non-Uniform Memory Architecture (NUMA) is a computer memory design used in multiprocessors, where the memory access time depends on the memory location relative to a processor. ...

K42 utilizes a microkernel architecture rather than the traditional monolithic kernel design. K42 consists of a small exception-handling component that serves as the microkernel, a fast IPC mechanism called protected procedure call (PPC), and servers most other components of the operating system. These servers exist in separate address spaces and rely upon the fast IPC mechanism for communication with the microkernel and other servers. Graphical overview of a microkernel A microkernel is a minimal computer operating system kernel providing only basic operating system services (system calls), while other services (commonly provided by kernels) are provided by user-space programs called servers. ... A Protected Procedure Call (PPC) is a messaging facility wherein messages are send and received using procedure call interfaces. ...

History

The core of K42 is based on the University of Toronto's Tornado Operating System. K42 is the university's third generation of research on scalable operating systems. Tornado OS / NUMAchine Multiprocessor was the second generation and Hurricane OS / Hector Multiprocessor was the first generation. The University of Toronto (U of T) is a coeducational public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. ...

Features

K42 currently supports the Linux PPC64 and PPC32 ABIs, so most PowerPC Linux binaries can run on K42 without modification, including the DB2 relational database. K42 has some device drivers implemented specifically for it, but it gets most of its hardware support by directly linking in Linux device drivers to a special server. Linux (IPA pronunciation: ) is a Unix-like computer operating system family. ... PowerPC is a RISC microprocessor architecture created by the 1991 Apple-IBM-Motorola alliance, known as AIM. Originally intended for workstations, PowerPC CPUs have since become popular embedded and high-performance processors as well. ... In computer software, an application binary interface (ABI) describes the low-level interface between an application program and the operating system, between an application and its libraries, or between component parts of the application. ... DB2 is IBMs line of RDBMS (or, as IBM now calls it, data server) software products within IBMs broader Information Management software line. ...

Another goal of the K42 design is to achieve a customizable and maintainable system. Being built with an object-oriented design, it allows applications to customize and thus optimize the OS services required, and then on the fly hot swap kernel object implementations. This is particularly important for applications, such as databases and web servers, where the ability to control physical resources can improve performance. Hot swapping is the ability to remove and replace components of a machine, usually a computer, while it is operating. ...

External links

free software Portal

• Official webpage
• K42 Wiki