K42 - SMARTAPPS

Introduction:

K42 is a research operating system kernel designed and developed by K42 group at IBM T.J.Watson Research Center using a micro-kernel design approach. The goal of K42 is to achieve good performance, scalability, customizability by individual applications, applicability to a wide range of problem domains. The system is structured using modular, object-oriented code; moving system functionality from the kernel to the application libraries; and avoiding global locks, global data structures.

Individual applications from different problem domains have more knowledge of their needs. K42 is designed to be customizable by an individual application. The application can make use of this feature depending on its requirements and hence better optimize itself. In this new application-OS paradigm, the program can customize OS services without disturbing other applications. This is achieved by moving some OS management services from the kernel to the user domain resulting in lesser load on the kernel.

Tasks Accomplished:

• Porting STAPL to the K42 Operating System
  
  
• Running STAPL applications under K42

  
  
  • STAPL test suite
  • Finding Strongly Connected Components in Parallel

Current Status:

We are currently studying the scheduler mechanisms in k42. The Next Generation STAPL Run Time System (RTS) will interface to K42 and present to the user i.e. compiler and/or programmer, a simple and clean interface through which run-time services can be customized and optimized. We will start by investigating how the RTS can map its threads onto the K42 scheduling mechanisms. The use of two dispatchers to deal with computation and communication separately looks promising which leads us to believe that a seamless integration of K42 thread scheduling and migration with the RTS will produce synergistic results.

Useful Links

K42 Research Home Page
- Links to white papers, related projects, K42 cvs source tree
K42 Wiki Page
K42 Discussion list
K42 Related Download Site
- Linux kernel sources with K42 patches, Toolchain to build K42
How-To Run K42 at Texas A&M