Combining Oberon with active objects

Abstract

Abstract. Multitasking is a topic on which many discussions have been held. There are different opinions about its need. Our own operating system, Oberon, was originally designed as a single user and single process system. While developing server systems and simulation kits we came to the conclusion that we need some notion of slim and easy to use process. We then decided to start a new project comprising the design of a new kernel and a new compiler for the support of concurrent execution of several processes on different priorit 7 levels with an appropriate protection mechanism preventing processes from inadmissible access to each other. The idea of active objects, simultaneously representing processes and containing both their action and their data, was the base for the 'Active-Oberon' project. Active objects are independent processes scheduled by the system. The management of the memory including stackallocation devolves on the new kernel. This takes much responsibilit 7 away from the programmer and makes the system safer. The goal of this paper is to present the implementation of the 'Active-Oberon' project whose concepts are described in detail in [Gut%b].

Do the fish really need remote control? A proposal for self-active objects in Oberon

“…Such conditions can easily be watched by some periodic system process. A separate report [7] in detail discusses an implementation of self-active objects for the Intel architecture.…”