Adaptable infrastructures for operating systems

This paper presents structuring adaptable execution environments, which are referred to as “infrastructures” and their impact on “instances” running above them. Instances are the only units for identification, for processing by performing services and for keeping state. Instances have different “shapes” at different “levels”. Instances at one level form the infrastructure for upper level instances. This recursion is reduced by the degree of abstraction over levels down to hardware. Adaptability means the possibility for developers to set up individual infra-structural properties or even individual infrastructures inside a system at certain levels. This is hardly supported in systems today. There are mostly two levels: user and kernel (→closed for adaptations). This approach investigates potentials of introducing tailored environments into a system at different levels. After a model is introduced and the relation to “objects” is discussed a case study-the COSAI-kernel-is presented, which is a dynamic adaptable μ-kernel, that serves as a subject of investigation of our ideas