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The Spring nucleus: A microkernel for objects

Graham Hamilton and Panos Kougiouris
Sun Microsystems Laboratories, Inc.
Mountain View, CA 94043 USA

Abstract

The Spring system is a distributed operating system that supports a distributed, object-oriented application framework. Each individual Spring system is based around a microkernel known as the nucleus, which is structured to support fast cross-address-space object invocations.

This paper discusses the design rationale for the nucleus's IPC facilities and how they fit into the overall Spring programming model. We then describe how the internal structure of the nucleus is organized to support fast cross-address-space calls, including some specific details and performance information on the current implementation.

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