Current day operating systems assume a cache-coherent system. Without that assumption, you're basically just looking at a bunch of networked computers. This is

Current day operating systems assume a cache-coherent system. Without that assumption, you're basically just looking at a bunch of networked computers. This is done because you get much, much more performance out of systems like that (see e.g. https://blog.acolyer.org/2015/06/05/scalability-but-at-what-cost/ https://blog.acolyer.org/2015/06/05/scalability-but-at-what-... ) You might enjoy reading about research projects into distributed operating systems, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amoeba_(operating_system) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amoeba_(operating_system) , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprite_(operating_system) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprite_(operating_system) or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_9_from_Bell_Labs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_9_from_Bell_Labs