K42

For other uses, see K-42 (disambiguation).
K42
DeveloperIBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center
University of Toronto
University of New Mexico
Working stateDiscontinued
Source modelOpen source
Initial releaseOctober 2006; 18 years ago (2006-10)
Marketing targetResearch
Available inEnglish
PlatformsPowerPC 64, 32
Kernel typeMicrokernel
Official websitewww.research.ibm.com/K42

K42 is a discontinued open-source research operating system (OS) for cache-coherent 64-bit multiprocessor systems. It was developed primarily at IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center in collaboration with the University of Toronto and University of New Mexico. The main focus of this OS is to address performance and scalability issues of system software on large-scale, shared memory, non-uniform memory access (NUMA) multiprocessing computers.[1]

K42 uses a microkernel architecture rather than the traditional monolithic kernel design. K42 consists of a small exception-handling component that serves as the microkernel, a fast inter-process communication (IPC) mechanism named protected procedure call (PPC), and servers for most other components of the operating system. These servers exist in separate address spaces and rely upon the fast IPC mechanism for communication with the microkernel and other servers.

  1. ^ Krieger, Orran; Auslander, Marc; Rosenburg, Bryan; Wisniewski, Robert W.; Xenidis, Jimi; Da Silva, Dilma; Ostrowski, Michal; Appavoo, Jonathan; Butrico, Maria; Mergen, Mark; Waterland, Amos; Uhlig, Volkmar (October 2006). "K42: building a complete operating system". ACM SIGOPS Operating Systems Review. 40 (4). Association for Computing Machinery (ACM): 133–145. doi:10.1145/1218063.1217949.