Re: Shocking News from Apple.
Ralf Baechle (ralf@mailhost.uni-koblenz.de)
Tue, 4 Nov 1997 09:47:33 +0100
On Tue, Nov 04, 1997 at 12:08:21AM -0700, Erik Andersen wrote:
>
> 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.
Such a layering structure is typical for every reasonable operating
system but it does by no way justify the classification of NT as a
microkernel. With the same argumentation you could call Victor Yodaiken's
realtime Linux a microkernel as it introduces the same layering structure.
Ralf