XOmB is an exokernel operating system written in the D programming language. It’s primarily being developed by students at the University of Pittsburgh.
- Learn about operating system design
- Implement interesting, modern features
- Remove legacy cruft
- Become rich and famous
From Wikipedia: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exokernel)
The idea behind exokernels is to force as few abstractions as possible on developers, enabling them to make as many decisions as possible about hardware abstractions. Exokernels are tiny, since functionality is limited to ensuring protection and multiplexing of resources, which are vastly simpler than conventional microkernels’ implementation of message passing and monolithic kernels’ implementation of abstractions.
Applications may request specific memory addresses, disk blocks, etc. The kernel only ensures that the requested resource is free, and the application is allowed to access it. This low-level hardware access allows the programmer to implement custom abstractions, and omit unnecessary ones, most commonly to improve a program’s performance. It also allows programmers to choose what level of abstraction they want, high, or low.
XOmB is 64 bit and multi core only. No support for anything else is currently planned.