Check out the new USENIX Web site.

Home About USENIX Events Membership Publications Students
BSDCon 2002 Abstract

Advanced Synchronization in Mac OS X: Extending Unix to SMP and Real-Time

Louis G. Gerbarg, Apple Computer, Inc.

Abstract

Throughout the years, as Unix has grown and evolved so has computer hardware. The 4.4BSD-Lite2 distribution had no support for two features that are becoming more and more important: SMP and real-time processing.

With the release Mac OS X Apple has made extensive alterations to our kernel in order to support both SMP and real-time processing. These alterations affected both the BSD and Mach portions of our kernel, as well as shaping our driver system, IOKit.

These changes range from scheduling policies, enabling support for kernel preemption, altering locking hierarchies, and defining new serialization primitives, as well as designing a driver architecture that allows developers to easily make their drivers SMP and preemption safe.

  • View the full text of this paper in HTML and PDF. Until February 2003, you will need your USENIX membership identification in order to access the full papers.
    The Proceedings are published as a collective work, © 2002 by the USENIX Association. All Rights Reserved. Rights to individual papers remain with the author or the author's employer. Permission is granted for the noncommercial reproduction of the complete work for educational or research purposes. USENIX acknowledges all trademarks within this paper.

  • If you need the latest Adobe Acrobat Reader, you can download it from Adobe's site.

  • To become a USENIX Member, please see our Membership Information.

?Need help? Use our Contacts page.

Last changed: 28 Dec. 2001 ml
Technical Program
BSDCon 2002 Home
USENIX home