The SPIN 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...

 is a research project implemented in the computer 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....

 Modula-3

Modula-3

In computer science, Modula-3 is a programming language conceived as a successor to an upgraded version of Modula-2 known as Modula-2+. While it has been influential in research circles it has not been adopted widely in industry...

, and is an Open Source

Open source

The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...

 project. It is designed with three goals in mind: flexibility

Flexibility (engineering)

Flexibility is used as an attribute of various types of systems. In the field of engineering systems design, it refers to designs that can adapt when external changes occur. Flexibility has been defined differently in many fields of engineering, architecture, biology, economics, etc...

, safety

Safety

Safety is the state of being "safe" , the condition of being protected against physical, social, spiritual, financial, political, emotional, occupational, psychological, educational or other types or consequences of failure, damage, error, accidents, harm or any other event which could be...

 and performance

Performance

A performance, in performing arts, generally comprises an event in which a performer or group of performers behave in a particular way for another group of people, the audience. Choral music and ballet are examples. Usually the performers participate in rehearsals beforehand. Afterwards audience...

. SPIN was developed at the University of Washington

University of Washington

University of Washington is a public research university, founded in 1861 in Seattle, Washington, United States. The UW is the largest university in the Northwest and the oldest public university on the West Coast. The university has three campuses, with its largest campus in the University...

.

The kernel can be extended by dynamically loaded modules which implement interfaces. These interfaces are defined by the Modula-3 INTERFACE modules. All kernel extensions are written in Modula-3.

One set of kernel extensions provides an application programming interface

Application programming interface

An application programming interface is a source code based specification intended to be used as an interface by software components to communicate with each other...

 (API) that emulates the Digital Unix system call interface. This allows Unix applications to run on the SPIN operating system.

External links

• The SPIN web site