Thesis (M.F.A.)--Rochester Institute of Technology, 2003. / Title from accompanying material.

The thesis describes the design and implementation of an interprocess communication (IPC) mechanism within a real-time distributed operating system kernel (RT-DOS) which is designed for a transputer-based network. The requirements of real-time operating systems are examined and existing design and implementation strategies are described. Particular attention is paid to one of the object-oriented techniques although it is concluded that these techniques are not feasible for the chosen implementation platform. Studies of a number of existing operating systems are reported. The choices for various aspects of operating system design and their influence on the IPC mechanism to be used are elucidated. The actual design choices are related to the real-time requirements and the implementation that has been adopted is described.

A system generation utility has been developed to assist students in producing IBM PC-based multitasking applications targeted for the small operating system (SOS) developed by Jerry E. Sayers. Our aim is to augment SOS by enabling a student to interactively tailor the characteristics of the operating system to meet the requirements of a particular application. The system allows the user to adjust factors such as: initial state, priority, and scheduling method of concurrently executed tasks, and. also, use of system resources. A custom operating system is produced by invoking a MAKE utility to bind SOS with application-specific code, in addition to intermediate source code created during the system generation process. Testing of the system included implementing an application that adds column vectors in a 5 x 5000 matrix concurrently. Further testing involves using the system generation utility along with SOS as part of an undergraduate operating systems class at East Tennessee State University.

No description available.

Associative processors, parallel processors, content addressable parallel processors, networks, and other architectures have been around the computing scene as "Distributed Processing", for some time now. Several hundred papers have been written discussing their use and design but so far no academic work has tried to summarize the field called "Distributed Processing" using a systems approach. This research report attempts to remedy this lack. It attempts to gather into one place information that existed as of late 1976 in a format easily understandable by managers and systems engineers. The report deals also with certain issues of centralization and decentralization of EDP (Electronic Data Processing) facilities, created by the introduction of distributed computing systems into industries and businesses.

Most, if not all, currently popular operating systems are designed to be general purpose environments for the development, maintenance, documentation and execution of systems of all types. Thus, the designers of the operating system must try to make the system a compromise between efficiency and power in all of these areas. This paper suggests that a class of operating systems and tools be designed to deal specifically with the problems of software design and development only. The fact that only the development tools themselves, and not the systems under development, are required to run fast and efficiently in the development environment is stressed as providing significantly different weight to the various considerations of operating system design. Since many of the problems of run time efficiency are no longer quite so pressing, additional power can be given to the operating system so that it may better support the software design and development process. / M.S.

Approved for public release, distribution is unlimited / A dynamic subversion attack on the Windows XP Embedded operating system is demonstrated to raise awareness in developers and consumers of the risk of subversion in commercial operating systems that may be safety critical. SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) systems that monitor and control our critical infrastructure depend on embedded systems. The attack can be loaded onto a fielded system that has been subverted with a small software artifice. The artifice could be inserted into the system at any time in the system's lifecycle. The attack provides a flexible method for the attacker, who may not be the same individual who inserted the artifice, to gain total control of the subverted system. Due to the dynamic loading property of this subversion, the attacker does not have to decide the aspect of the system to be targeted until a time of her choice. The attack does not exploit an existing flaw in the target module but is possible because the initial artifice is inserted into the kernel of an operating system where adversaries have access to source code. This thesis discusses certain aspects of known methods for developing systems free from subversion. Several projects that utilized these methods are presented. / Civilian, Naval Postgraduate School

No description available.

ITC/USA 2006 Conference Proceedings / The Forty-Second Annual International Telemetering Conference and Technical Exhibition / October 23-26, 2006 / Town and Country Resort & Convention Center, San Diego, California / Recent emphasis has been placed on mobile robotics performing in unstructured environments. This realm of operations requires many different algorithms to interpret the various situations. This not only requires a system that is able to support, and facilitate, the fusion of the results, but it also needs to be tolerant of system errors. In modern operating systems, separate processes are able to fail without affecting other processes. Using this ability, along with fault tolerant inter-process communications, and supervisory process managers, allows the total system to continue to operate under adverse conditions. While this paper focuses primarily on the challenges faced by mobile robotics, the approach can be extended to a wide range of systems which must autonomously identify and adapt to failures/situations.

Thesis (MSc)--Stellenbosch University, 2000. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Users are not supposed to modify an operating system kernel, but it is often necessary to add a device driver for a new peripheral device. Device driver development is a difficult and time-consuming process that must be performed by an expert. Drivers are difficult to debug and a malfunctioning driver could cause the operating system to crash. Ways are therefore needed to make the development of device drivers safer and easier. A number of different device driver development methods are examined in this thesis. An existing micro-kernel that supports in-kernel device drivers as well as extensible device drivers has been modified to support user-level and loadable drivers. These extensions ensured that all the development methods were implemented in the same environment and a comparison could thus be made on a fair basis. A comparison of the different methods with respect to the efficiency of the resulting device driver, as well as the ease of the development process, is presented. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Gebruikers is nie veronderstelom aan 'n bedryfstelsel te verander nie, maar tog is dit gereeld nodig om 'n toesteldrywer vir 'n nuwe randapparaat by te voeg. Die ontwikkeling van 'n toesteldrywer is 'n tydrowende en moeilike proses en moet deur 'n kundige aangepak word. Toesteldrywers is moeilik om te ontfout en kan deur verkeerde werking die hele stelsel tot stilstand bring. Daar is dus tegnieke nodig om die ontwikkeling van toestelhanteerders makliker en veiliger te maak. 'n Aantal verskillende ontwikkelingsmetodes vir toesteldrywers word in hierdie tesis ondersoek. 'n Bestaande mikro-kern wat in-kern, sowel as uitbreibare toesteldrywers ondersteun, is aangepas om gebruikersvlak en laaibare toestelhanteerders te ondersteun. Hierdie uitbreiding het verseker dat al die ontwikkelingsmetodes in dieselfde omgewing geïmplementeer is. Dit was dus moontlik om die metodes op 'n regverdige grondslag te vergelyk. Die vergelyking is gedoen ten opsigte van die effektiwiteit van die resulterende toesteldrywer sowel as die moeilikheidsgraad van die ontwikkelingsproses.