PANDA: A distributed multiprocessor operating system
PANDA is a design for a distributed multiprocessor and an operating system. PANDA is designed to allow easy expansion of both hardware and software. As such, the PANDA kernel provides only message passing and memory and process management. The other features needed for the system (device drivers, secondary storage management, etc.) are provided as replaceable user tasks. The thesis presents PANDA's design and implementation, both hardware and software. PANDA uses multiple 68010 processors sharing memory on a VME bus, each such node potentially connected to others via a high speed network. The machine is completely homogeneous: there are no differences between processors that are detectable by programs running on the machine. A single two-processor node has been constructed. Each processor contains memory management circuits designed to allow processors to share page tables safely. PANDA presents a programmers' model similar to the hardware model: a job is divided into multiple tasks, each having its own address space. Within each task, multiple processes share code and data. Tasks can send messages to each other, and set up virtual circuits between themselves. Peripheral devices such as disc drives are represented within PANDA by tasks. PANDA divides secondary storage into volumes, each volume being accessed by a volume access task, or VAT. All knowledge about the way that data is stored on a disc is kept in its volume's VAT. The design is such that PANDA should provide a useful testbed for file systems and device drivers, as these can be installed without recompiling PANDA itself, and without rebooting the machine.
- Research Organization:
- New South Wales Univ., Kensington (Australia)
- OSTI ID:
- 5583799
- Resource Relation:
- Other Information: Thesis (Ph. D.)
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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Related Subjects
ARRAY PROCESSORS
DISTRIBUTED DATA PROCESSING
P CODES
COMMUNICATIONS
DESIGN
EXECUTIVE CODES
IMPLEMENTATION
MAGNETIC DISKS
MEMORY DEVICES
MEMORY MANAGEMENT
PROGRAMMING
TASK SCHEDULING
COMPUTER CODES
DATA PROCESSING
MAGNETIC STORAGE DEVICES
PROCESSING
990200* - Mathematics & Computers