Re: Shocking News from Apple.

Erik Andersen (andersee@debian.org)
Tue, 4 Nov 1997 00:08:21 -0700

On Mon, Nov 03, 1997 at 06:48:44PM -0500, Steven N. Hirsch wrote:
>
>
> On Mon, 3 Nov 1997, Adam Wiggins wrote:
> >
> > Yes, i've spoken to a few ppl in regard to this, and it doesnt
> > really fall in the micro kernel catagory they tell me but i havent looked
> > at it myself. While we are on the subject, MS class NT as a micro kernel
> > ;)
>
> MS can classify NT however they like. Calling a pig a bird still
> doesn't get you flying ham, however.
>
>

And your point is? I believe that Microsoft would be fully justified
in calling NT a micro-kernel based OS. The NT kernel sits on top of
what they term the "HAL" or Hardware Access Layer, which abstracts the
underlying hardware. When NT gets ported to new platforms (a dying
art form it seems) MS ports the HAL, not the NT kernel. There are
a couple of commercial Real-Time products on the market that produce
hard Real-Time for NT by adding another kernel on top of the HAL --
producing real-time by completely bypassing NT for real-time apps.
This particular pig (bloated pig at that) looks micro-kernel to me.

-Erik

--
Erik B. Andersen   Web:    http://www.inconnect.com/~andersen/ 
                   email:  andersee@debian.org
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