JX (operating system) - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

JX is a microkernel

Microkernel

In computer science, a microkernel is the near-minimum amount of software that can provide the mechanisms needed to implement an operating system . These mechanisms include low-level address space management, thread management, and inter-process communication...

operating system

Operating system

An operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...

with both the kernel and applications implemented using the Java

Java (programming language)

Java is a programming language originally developed by James Gosling at Sun Microsystems and released in 1995 as a core component of Sun Microsystems' Java platform. The language derives much of its syntax from C and C++ but has a simpler object model and fewer low-level facilities...

programming language

Programming language

A programming language is an artificial language designed to communicate instructions to a machine, particularly a computer. Programming languages can be used to create programs that control the behavior of a machine and/or to express algorithms precisely....

Overview

JX is implemented as an extended Java Virtual Machine

Java Virtual Machine

A Java virtual machine is a virtual machine capable of executing Java bytecode. It is the code execution component of the Java software platform. Sun Microsystems stated that there are over 4.5 billion JVM-enabled devices.-Overview:...

(the JX Core), adding support to the Java system for necessary features such as protection domains and hardware access, along with a number of components written in Java that provide kernel facilities to applications running on the computer. Because Java is a type-safe

Type safety

In computer science, type safety is the extent to which a programming language discourages or prevents type errors. A type error is erroneous or undesirable program behaviour caused by a discrepancy between differing data types...

language, JX is able to provide isolation between running applications without needing to use hardware memory protection. This technique, known as language-based protection

Language-based system

A language-based system is a type of operating system that uses language features to provide security, instead of or in addition to hardware mechanisms. In such systems, code referred to as the trusted base is responsible for approving programs for execution, assuring they cannot perform operations...

means that system calls and inter-process communication

Inter-process communication

In computing, Inter-process communication is a set of methods for the exchange of data among multiple threads in one or more processes. Processes may be running on one or more computers connected by a network. IPC methods are divided into methods for message passing, synchronization, shared...

in JX does not cause an address space switch, an operation which is slow on most computers. JX runs on standard PCs, with support for a limited range of common hardware elements. It is open source software, developed by the University of Erlangen.

The primary benefits of JX include:

a small trusted computing base
Trusted computing base
The trusted computing base of a computer system is the set of all hardware, firmware, and/or software components that are critical to its security, in the sense that bugs or vulnerabilities occurring inside the TCB might jeopardize the security properties of the entire system...

(TCB) results in a high security system,
lack of address space switching enables high performance compared to most microkernel systems.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.