Evaluation of a distributed single address space operating system

Abstract

In this paper we present an evaluation of Angel, a single address space operating system, originally designed in 1992, which has been developed over the past few years. The purpose of this work was to examine how we could simplify the kernel and service structure using the single address space as the enabling technology. We believe that in so doing, we could achieve far better performance and simpler extensibility compared to other micro-kernel architectures. We recently completed a prototype system based around the PC/486 architecture which has allowed us to evaluate our claims and postulations. An initial analysis of this prototype has been performed to examine the system's structure and performance characteristics. This demonstrates an architecture which is more flexible, faster and smaller than monolithic operating systems.