WORKPLACE MICROKERNEL AND OS - A CASE-STUDY

IBM's Microkernel, named Workplace OS microkernel,(1) was the core com ponent of Workplace OS, a portable successor of OS/2. The basic premis e of Workplace OS work was (1) IBM would adopt and improve the CMU Mac h 3.0 microkernel for use on PDAs, the desktop, workstations, and mass ively parallel machines, and (2) that several operating system persona lities would execute on the microkernel platform concurrently. This ar chitecture would allow users to switch between applications written fo r different operating systems while IBM would also benefit by having o ne common platform for all product lines. The goals of the microkernel and the technical features of design are described in this paper. We also present lessons that may benefit future projects with similar goa ls. (C) 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.