4 ms·

This also reminded my of the Singularity research project from Microsoft: http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/singularity/ http://research.microsoft.co

by gabriel 17y ago

This also reminded my of the Singularity research project from Microsoft: http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/singularity/ http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/singularity/ I've actually used some of the concepts in this research for writing a secure distributed testing platform. So it has many applications outside of the operating system. Really cool stuff is going on in this area between OS and languages.

daeken 17y ago
Had to double-check my article to make sure I didn't cull out my Singularity reference, as it was a big influence of mine in Renraku's development. If Singularity were released under a non-tainting license, Renraku likely would be a distribution of it rather than an OS unto itself. MSR is doing some amazing things; can't wait to see what else they do with it.
- gabriel 17y ago
  I noticed Singularity hadn't been mentioned directly on HN before so that's why I threw a link in here :) I also wish the Singularity project had a friendly license. I also had to do a lot of work up front, so congrats on the work you've done! Truly cool.
  - pohl 17y ago
    It's good to see some folks on HN who have an interest in Singularity-like concepts. It makes me want to take this opportunity to ask if anybody has noticed the similarities between those projects and things going on over in the LLVM world. To my eyes, LLVM brings many of the same things to the table as the Bartok compiler, which also uses an SSA IR to provide the safety needed to run everything in ring 0. Furthermore, if one reads the pubs directory over at llvm.org, one sees research papers where a few instructions were added (LLVA) that give LLVM the ability to host a modified version of linux where everything is managed within LLVM, save a very tiny shim between LLVM and the hardware. There's also some papers on LLVM-SVA (Secure Virtual Architecture) where the same concept is extended to "enforce fine-grained (object level) memory safety, control-flow integrity, type safety..." So to my amateur eyes, it looks like these research projects are very similar, with one being less overt about the direction it's headed. Am I high? Has anybody else noticed this?
    - gabriel 17y ago
      Yes! I've also seen the similarities between all of these things and LLVM. Part of LLVM is an interest in correctness. I've seen more of an interest in these areas in research as well. For example, there was even a recent research highlight in an ACM magazine about "Formal Verification of a Realistic Compiler": http://pauillac.inria.fr/~xleroy/publi/compcert-CACM.pdf http://pauillac.inria.fr/~xleroy/publi/compcert-CACM.pdf Plus, newer companies like Coverity (http://www.coverity.com/html/research-library.html http://www.coverity.com/html/research-library.html) bring a sense of credibility to a practice that hasn't had much traction in the industry. I think all of these ideas can come together to make something quite useful. But I suppose bringing it all together is the hard part :) Update: I also saw lots of cool associations to the Self Programming Language (http://research.sun.com/self/language.html http://research.sun.com/self/language.html), which includes some great research, especially in their paper "Self: The Power of Simplicity": http://research.sun.com/self/papers/self-power.html http://research.sun.com/self/papers/self-power.html
      - russellallen 17y ago
        More current Self link is the official homepage at http://selflanguage.org http://selflanguage.org

by gabriel 17y ago

daeken 17y ago

Had to double-check my article to make sure I didn't cull out my Singularity reference, as it was a big influence of mine in Renraku's development. If Singularity were released under a non-tainting license, Renraku likely would be a distribution of it rather than an OS unto itself. MSR is doing some amazing things; can't wait to see what else they do with it.

gabriel 17y ago
I noticed Singularity hadn't been mentioned directly on HN before so that's why I threw a link in here :) I also wish the Singularity project had a friendly license. I also had to do a lot of work up front, so congrats on the work you've done! Truly cool.
- pohl 17y ago
  It's good to see some folks on HN who have an interest in Singularity-like concepts. It makes me want to take this opportunity to ask if anybody has noticed the similarities between those projects and things going on over in the LLVM world. To my eyes, LLVM brings many of the same things to the table as the Bartok compiler, which also uses an SSA IR to provide the safety needed to run everything in ring 0. Furthermore, if one reads the pubs directory over at llvm.org, one sees research papers where a few instructions were added (LLVA) that give LLVM the ability to host a modified version of linux where everything is managed within LLVM, save a very tiny shim between LLVM and the hardware. There's also some papers on LLVM-SVA (Secure Virtual Architecture) where the same concept is extended to "enforce fine-grained (object level) memory safety, control-flow integrity, type safety..." So to my amateur eyes, it looks like these research projects are very similar, with one being less overt about the direction it's headed. Am I high? Has anybody else noticed this?
  - gabriel 17y ago
    Yes! I've also seen the similarities between all of these things and LLVM. Part of LLVM is an interest in correctness. I've seen more of an interest in these areas in research as well. For example, there was even a recent research highlight in an ACM magazine about "Formal Verification of a Realistic Compiler": http://pauillac.inria.fr/~xleroy/publi/compcert-CACM.pdf http://pauillac.inria.fr/~xleroy/publi/compcert-CACM.pdf Plus, newer companies like Coverity (http://www.coverity.com/html/research-library.html http://www.coverity.com/html/research-library.html) bring a sense of credibility to a practice that hasn't had much traction in the industry. I think all of these ideas can come together to make something quite useful. But I suppose bringing it all together is the hard part :) Update: I also saw lots of cool associations to the Self Programming Language (http://research.sun.com/self/language.html http://research.sun.com/self/language.html), which includes some great research, especially in their paper "Self: The Power of Simplicity": http://research.sun.com/self/papers/self-power.html http://research.sun.com/self/papers/self-power.html
    - russellallen 17y ago
      More current Self link is the official homepage at http://selflanguage.org http://selflanguage.org