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From: CALTON@CS.COLUMBIA.EDU (Calton Pu)
Newsgroups: comp.os.research
Subject: the Synthesis system
Message-ID: <3076@sdcsvax.UCSD.EDU>
Date: Sat, 2-May-87 22:15:13 EDT
Article-I.D.: sdcsvax.3076
Posted: Sat May  2 22:15:13 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 3-May-87 18:49:46 EDT
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The Synthesis System

Abstract

The Synthesis distributed operating system combines efficient kernel
calls with a high-level, orthogonal interface.  The key idea is the
use of a code synthesizer in the kernel to generate specialized (thus
short and fast) kernel routines for specific situations.  For example,
opening a file returns code to read and write that specific file.  As
a result, the Synthesis kernel call that reads one byte from /dev/mem
takes about fifteen microseconds on a 68020 machine.  The kernel
interface is based on a simple model of computation called a synthetic
machine, which consists of six operations on four kinds of objects.
This combination of a high-level interface with the code synthesizer
avoids the traditional trade-off in operating systems between powerful
interfaces and efficient implementations.
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We have a tech report describing the reasons why code synthesis wins
big, plus the simple model of computation and its orthogonal
interface.  Requests may be sent to calton@cs.columbia.edu or
massalin@cs.columbia.edu.

		-Calton-
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