An Operating System Architecture for Future Information Appliances

Abstract. A software platform for developing future information ap-pliances requires to satisfy various diverse requirements. The operating system architecture presented in this paper enhances the flexibility and dependability through virtualization techniques. The architecture allows a system to use multiple operating systems simultaneously, and to use multi-core processors in a flexible way. Also, dependability mechanisms in our architecture will avoid crashing or hanging a system as much as possible in order to improve the user experience when defects in the soft-ware are exposed. We present a brief overview of each component in the operating system architecture and some sample scenarios that illustrate the effectiveness of the architecture.