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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 li

by 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

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