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That is

precisely one of the most important factors what makes the
windows 'kernel' so unstable and insecure.

But even excluding the significant security issues, the nt
kernel does not amount to much (all recent releases are
based on the nt kernel). This is the oppinion of people
familiar with designing and developing kernels. I cannot say
the nt kernel is completely crappy. It is OK for a PC used by
a single user.

For more serious types of computation: e.g., multi-user
computation, distributed processing, transaction
processing, i.e., the standard uses of modern OSs, ranks at
the low end. The nt kernel has uncontrolled resource
issues. For instance a task or a delayed interrupt may hold
a critical resource for too long. There are cases where a
device driver may lock the system bus or inhibit interrupts
for 300-500 ms. This is too long even for slow interactive
processing. Another problem is that there are only 32
scheduling priorities.

Most of the performance problems stem from the fact that
the kernel is meant for a PC and not a general purpose
multiuser system.

Typical UNIX systems have 128-256 scheduling priorities,
different scheduling classes and are VERY disciplined with
the desing of drivers that lock resources. UNIX were
designed from scratch to be multi-taskig, multi-user and
connected to networks. Additionally, UNIX kernels scale to
100s of processors with single system image. Linux is
behind UNIX but it is catching up. For instance, the Altix
3000 from SGI can go up to 2048 Itaniumn 2 processors
and it runs a 64 bit Linux that currently scales to 512
processors SMP. The windows NT (and rest) until recenty
used to scale up to 4 processors. Now there WILL be
offerings for 16 Proc from HP.

How come the UNIX (and recently Linux) are more scalable,
efficient and ofcourse secure, but the multi-billion NT
kernel not, defies logical explanation. I believe that they do
not care. Kernel work is invisible to the user but it makes
all the difference for system performance. If MS starts
planning for serious, robust systems they will have to go
through the same path that all OSs went. This requires a
complete rewrite of the kernel.

I hope they will use UNIX as the kernel to save everyone's
time and money. Their apps are OK (to me are too cutsie)
as long as they keep them in the user space.

-m

Posted by: michael-t   Posted on: 02/14/04 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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