Christopher Brumme - Is a managed kernel possible? | TheChannel9Team

Manip

Woot.. AND after we have this wonderful kernel, why not store everything in XML. [/Sarcasm]

You guys seriously live in your own little magical world where CPU is infinite all you do it comes up with thousands of new ways to make our computers EVEN slower. There is a need to find a good balance between speed and security, building the kernel in this way is not the answer. It is like the one step forward two steps back approach.

Seriously, lately it seems like increases in CPU and RAM have only been used to let software get fat and programmers lazy. The XML parser is example 1 in that case.

barlo_mung
w00t

First I think they will be going in the other direction, allowing drivers to run in user mode. That is what they were saying at WinHEC anyhow. That in the Longhorn time frame we would see user mode driver support in the WDF.

Charles
Welcome Change

Yep. This is a rather esoteric notion at this point. But who better to ask than Chris Brumme? At any rate, buggy kernel mode processes are primarily responsible for causing macro kernel-based operating systems to crash.

Making it possible to move some kernel mode drivers up into user mode is certainly moving in the right direction.

You should see some user mode driver support in the WDF come Longhorn.

Keep on posting,

Charles

eddwo
Wheres my head at?

That sounds like what this guy is working on.

"Galen Hunt
Researcher

I am a Researcher leading a project to build a prototype research OS kernel, called Singularity, on managed code. We are using Singularity to exploring issues of system reliability. In this context, I loosely define reliabity as, "the system never does anything unexpected or unanticipated by the its designers, developers, administrators, or users."

Sounds very interesting, but I imagine it'll be several years before this gets anywhere near a commercial product.

SorinD
Sorin Dolha

In my opinion,

Windows' kernel should definately become .NET-based in the future, when hardware will be better. Old Win32 kernel compatibility should be provided as an emulated environment, just like is DOS today in Win32. Getting the kernel to .NET is a needed step forward, and even if the computers will run it slower, it will be extremely benefic especially for developers (including drivers developers or so, which today have many headaches with developing on the not-managed core of Windows). Personally, I always exchange speed on elegance, therefore, I vote for it: bring .NET to the Windows core as soon as technically possible and economically possible...

Beside those thoughts, I think that Micrsoft should talk with Intel, AMD or so, to create .NET-supporting processors, processors which hopefully will be able to run MSIL directly, therefore, very fast! What do you think about this hardware change to come together with the new .NET Windows core?

damphlett

Has anyone manufactured (or is anyone planning to) a cpu that can execute IL directly? surely there's no speed compromise on a CPU that could do that?

Manip

This is insanity. I mean if you were serious about sacrificing speed for security then why not look at a Micro-Kernel? I mean the big draw-back of that is you have a speed drop (nowhere near how much this would) but is more secure because the modules can't damage the core kernel.

It would also load super-fast and be super-stable!

Derek Simon

damphlett wrote:
Has anyone manufactured (or is anyone planning to) a cpu that can execute IL directly? surely there's no speed compromise on a CPU that could do that?

Transmeta has already demonstrated a processor that can execute Java bytecode.

ecko3437

I find this concept very interesting. I've thought about it, but didn't give it a seroius thinking through. If Windows' Kernel DID become .NET based, I'd like it if some applications were open source (like Paint, Word Pad, Calculator, etc) so people could build on those and make Windows even better by turning MS Paint into something that might do some of the stuff Photoshop does or Fireworks. We could turn those basic apps into something really special (ahem, fix the JPEG compression, make it so you can select created objects and move them around at anytime, etc).

A .NET kernel... Sounds interesting!