Linked by Thom Holwerda on Mon 21st Nov 2011 11:25 UTC, submitted by moondevil
You all know MINIX - a microkernel operating system project led by Andrew Tanenbaum. The French Linux magazine LinuxFr.org has an interview with Andrew Tanenbaum about MINIX' current state and future. There's some interesting stuff in there.
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RE[3]: Tanenbaum again is wrong
by Alfman on Thu 24th Nov 2011 18:31
in reply to "RE[2]: Tanenbaum again is wrong"
Member since:2011-01-28
allanregistos,
"Can a microkernel-kernel designed OS such as Minix3 be good enough to scale to real-time demands of audio apps similar to what we found in Linux kernel with -rt patches?"
I am afraid it is out of my domain.
I know that pulse audio recently underwent a shift away from using sound card interrupts to using higher resolution sources like the APIC clock. This inevitably caused numerous problems on many systems, but never the less the goal was to get lower latencies by having the system write directly into the memory being read simultaneously a moment later by the sound card.
I don't see why any of this couldn't also be done with a micro-kernel driver. In fact I think the audio mixing for pulseaudio under linux today already occurs in a user space process using "zero-copy" memory mapping. I've never looked at it in any detail though.
RE[4]: Tanenbaum again is wrong
by allanregistos on Sat 26th Nov 2011 01:15
in reply to "RE[3]: Tanenbaum again is wrong"
Member since:2011-02-10
allanregistos,
"Can a microkernel-kernel designed OS such as Minix3 be good enough to scale to real-time demands of audio apps similar to what we found in Linux kernel with -rt patches?"
I am afraid it is out of my domain.
I know that pulse audio recently underwent a shift away from using sound card interrupts to using higher resolution sources like the APIC clock. This inevitably caused numerous problems on many systems, but never the less the goal was to get lower latencies by having the system write directly into the memory being read simultaneously a moment later by the sound card.
I don't see why any of this couldn't also be done with a micro-kernel driver. In fact I think the audio mixing for pulseaudio under linux today already occurs in a user space process using "zero-copy" memory mapping. I've never looked at it in any detail though.
"Can a microkernel-kernel designed OS such as Minix3 be good enough to scale to real-time demands of audio apps similar to what we found in Linux kernel with -rt patches?"
I am afraid it is out of my domain.
I know that pulse audio recently underwent a shift away from using sound card interrupts to using higher resolution sources like the APIC clock. This inevitably caused numerous problems on many systems, but never the less the goal was to get lower latencies by having the system write directly into the memory being read simultaneously a moment later by the sound card.
I don't see why any of this couldn't also be done with a micro-kernel driver. In fact I think the audio mixing for pulseaudio under linux today already occurs in a user space process using "zero-copy" memory mapping. I've never looked at it in any detail though.
That is enough for me, alfman. I believe that the current monolithic structure of OS kernels will be modified in the future to scale to new innovations in hardware architectures. Thank you for the insights in Pulse audio, I am not capable to respond to you regarding the technical side of it.
As an end user and an OS hobbyist, I think I need some information in the future of what OS is the best for my desktop needs. I think today's operating systems(except for the MAC) were too focused on servers and then in the desktop as an afterthought. The fact that in the Linux kernel we have -rt patches proves that.
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Member since:
2011-02-10
Alfman:
I considered myself an inexperience desktop developer.
I am also an audio/multimedia user and uses applications such as Ardour and jack.
If you are a microkernel expert or any of you here reading this, I have a question.
Can a microkernel-kernel designed OS such as Minix3 be good enough to scale to real-time demands of audio apps similar to what we found in Linux kernel with -rt patches?
Since I believe this is where the microkernel's future holds. Regardless of the efficiency, stability and security of a microkernel system, if it isn't useful to a desktop developer doing his work, to an Ardour/jack user, or any other end user, it will become useless but a toy.