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The immortality of operating systems or is research in operating systems still justified?

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Operating Systems of the 90s and Beyond

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 563))

Abstract

The above discussion has shown that there is a growing need to cope with the past when discussing new operating system concepts including the underlying system architecture. The value of future system architectures will be measured in terms of their ability to support the incremental substitution of existing operating systems by hardware/software elements of the new system structure.

Basic research in operating systems aiming at better modularity, portability, fault tolerance etc. is still considered an area of utmost relevance. However, more applied research projects are needed to systematically study the effects encountered while mapping old systems and interfaces onto new system architectures. A too narrow focus on UNIX may mirror the wrong illusion of a (non-existent) universality of the abstractions defined in today's state-of-the-art distributed OS kernels.

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Arthur Karshmer Jürgen Nehmer

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© 1991 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Nehmer, J. (1991). The immortality of operating systems or is research in operating systems still justified?. In: Karshmer, A., Nehmer, J. (eds) Operating Systems of the 90s and Beyond. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 563. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0024528

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0024528

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-54987-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-46630-7

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