2K: A Distributed OS for the New Millennium

this paper, we propose that such operating systems should be constructed as systems that manage distributed objects, exploiting the current trends in middleware and interpretive languages that support interoperability, to focus on the management of change. To add strength to our argument, we recount our experiences with 2K (http://choices.cs.uiuc.edu/2K), an operating system built using these principles. The design and construction of resource management for the intelligent information spaces of the coming decades that exploit smart mobile devices, clothing, and vehicles and create smart oÆces, homes, and cities requires new approaches to the management of dynamically changing resources. Our approach is to leverage object-oriented research on building adaptive and customizable systems to create an infrastructure that supports change. New generations of hardware rapidly replace older ones and current users often use multiple computers. Thus, we look to interface standards produced by organizations like the Object Management Group to simplify the organization of changing systems. A middleware layer like DCOM, CORBA, or Java RMI abstracts the hardware and machine dependencies. In a software architecture that supports dynamic, mobile devices, computers, and users, we propose modeling all entities of interest as distributed objects. To help overcome the issues of dynamic conguration, the distributed objects are collected into congurable components and any dependencies between components are modeled as objects. Services are used to manage the placement, conguration, change, persistence, reliability, and migration of objects. The services are extensions of standardized system services like CORBA or DCOM. To achieve eÆciency, the middleware layer, services, and distributed..