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I/O Is Faster Than CPU – Let’s Partition Resources and Eliminate OS Abstractions [pdf]

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Re: I/O Is Faster Than CPU – Let’s Partition Resources and Eliminate OS Abstractions [pdf]

#61

Post by taborj »

bluetomcat wrote: post #42

We need entirely new OS abstractions to replace the dated notions of hierarchical file systems built around the metaphor of file cabinets, I/O as streams of bytes, terminals, process hierarchy. Essentially, say goodbye to the Unix model after 50 years. It would open up an entirely new world of software experimentation and craftsmanship.

Every system is driven by user adoption. At this point, it will be nearly impossible to dethrone the current methodologies.

Not saying it shouldn't be done, just that it might fail.

Re: I/O Is Faster Than CPU – Let’s Partition Resources and Eliminate OS Abstractions [pdf]

#63

Post by taborj »

thaumaturgy wrote: post #56
Ericson2314 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amen to that. Unix was never a good design, and now is severely out of date. We can no longer afford to hack around it.

Yeah, Unix was a terrible design. Composable architecture combined with standardized i/o and IPC models. I can't imagine anything worse, especially compared to today's proliferation of data formats and inscrutable APIs. It's a good thing nobody uses it anymore.

My Online Sarcasm Detector(tm) is beeping wildly

Re: I/O Is Faster Than CPU – Let’s Partition Resources and Eliminate OS Abstractions [pdf]

#64

Post by strictfp »

bluetomcat wrote: post #42

We need entirely new OS abstractions to replace the dated notions of hierarchical file systems built around the metaphor of file cabinets, I/O as streams of bytes, terminals, process hierarchy. Essentially, say goodbye to the Unix model after 50 years. It would open up an entirely new world of software experimentation and craftsmanship.

One idea I've been throwing around is to replace files with HTTP resources; everything is a resource. Effectively Plan9s idea, but the time might be right.

Re: I/O Is Faster Than CPU – Let’s Partition Resources and Eliminate OS Abstractions [pdf]

#66

Post by pjmlp »

thaumaturgy wrote: post #56
Ericson2314 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amen to that. Unix was never a good design, and now is severely out of date. We can no longer afford to hack around it.

Yeah, Unix was a terrible design. Composable architecture combined with standardized i/o and IPC models. I can't imagine anything worse, especially compared to today's proliferation of data formats and inscrutable APIs. It's a good thing nobody uses it anymore.

Had Bell Labs been allowed to sell it in first place and that would have been exactly its outcome.

Re: I/O Is Faster Than CPU – Let’s Partition Resources and Eliminate OS Abstractions [pdf]

#69

Post by Spivak »

bluetomcat wrote: post #42

We need entirely new OS abstractions to replace the dated notions of hierarchical file systems built around the metaphor of file cabinets, I/O as streams of bytes, terminals, process hierarchy. Essentially, say goodbye to the Unix model after 50 years. It would open up an entirely new world of software experimentation and craftsmanship.

What would you replace it with? At the very core you need two things: the notion of a unit of data and some metadata to address it. To be as flexible as possible that unit of data would probably modeled as a sequence of individually addressable bytes but it could be more structured. Such a thing is dangerous because if your structure isn't sufficiently expressive 20 years down the road people will end up imposing their own structure on top of obj.binary and there goes all the work.

Once you have data and handles to access it you might start wanting some convenience features like access control, locking, namespacing, constraints, relationships.

I don't disagree that we can drop many of the current filesystem semantics but fundamentally all that really means is changing is the query language to access objects and manipulate their metadata.

I also don't disagree about process hierarchy. Being able to express relationships between processes beyond parent-child natively without farming out to an external scheduler would be awesome.

Re: I/O Is Faster Than CPU – Let’s Partition Resources and Eliminate OS Abstractions [pdf]

#70

Post by bluetomcat »

thaumaturgy wrote: post #52
bluetomcat wrote: post #42

We need entirely new OS abstractions to replace the dated notions of hierarchical file systems built around the metaphor of file cabinets, I/O as streams of bytes, terminals, process hierarchy. Essentially, say goodbye to the Unix model after 50 years. It would open up an entirely new world of software experimentation and craftsmanship.

I would like to see an updated file system architecture that's closer to a database, with tagging and all that. And I could see that extending to processes too. But what are you imagining as alternatives for i/o and terminals?

What if we surpass file systems completely? Imagine every process having its own "non-volatile" memory area, where all persistent state is kept between restarts, with a clean OS interface to share that state to other processes?

Terminals and process hierarchy are a complete no-go in a fresh design. Every entity in the system can be identified through unique IDs which can be handed down to other processes based on different OS policies.

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