Microsoft Research releases Barrelfish - OS optimized for multiple cores

http://www.barrelfish.org/

by Maascamp • 17 years ago

25 13 17 years ago

gjm113• 17 years ago

Also coming soon from Microsoft Research: projects called Bracemonkey and B8.

I duno, its not that hard to believe that Microsoft can innovate. They do hire smart people. Sure Steve needs a nice kick in the bald-head, but that is beside the point.

gjm113• 17 years ago

I have no trouble believing that MS can innovate. I just thought it was odd that they came out with a weird-sounding animal name that happens to be almost identical to a weird-sounding animal name one of their big rivals recently used for an experimental project (they renamed it to Nitro when it was released), and I find it hard to believe that MS doesn't have people who go carefully over everything they do in public looking for legal or PR issues, or that they didn't notice how much "Barrelfish" resembles "Squirrelfish". On the other hand, it's hard to see that they gain any particular benefit from it, and I'm not much inclined to start making up conspiracy theories, and maybe the resemblance isn't as obvious as I think it is. Dunno. ... So, wanting to draw attention to the oddity but not having anything very coherent to say about it, I just made a joke out of it, but unfortunately it seems to have been insufficiently funny. Can't win 'em all.

sdp2• 17 years ago

I understand Bracemonkey is like Greasemonkey, and B8 is like V8, but what is Barrelfish like?

gjm113• 17 years ago

No. Barrelfish is awfully close to Squirrelfish. Hence Tracemonkey -> Bracemonkey and V8 -> B8.

Then again, a joke that needs explaining is a bad joke. So, sorry.

wmf• 17 years ago

I skimmed these papers and it's a mixed bag. They are showing clear speedups for some operations on large (>16-core) systems, but they are also introducing what looks like significant complexity (like replacing shared data and locks with two-phase commit).

dgallagher• 17 years ago

I know they're completely different OS's, but anyone have any insight into how this compares to Grand Central on Snow Leopard?

Microsoft Research releases Barrelfish - OS optimized for multiple cores

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