Coyotos

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Coyotos is a capability-based security-focused microkernel operating system being developed at the Johns Hopkins University's Systems Research Laboratory[1]. It is a successor to the EROS system.

[edit] History

Coyotos is considered by its creators to be an "evolutionary step" [2] beyond the EROS operating system, which in turn was derived from KeyKOS. The primary developer of EROS was Jonathan Shapiro, and he is also a driving force behind Coyotos. A more in-depth history is located at [3]. Since mid-2006 the Coyotos developers have been working with the developers of GNU Hurd to make Coyotos a suitable microkernel for GNU Hurd, however, progress is slow.

[edit] Objectives

While it has many objectives, one of the most interesting is to become the first formally verified operating system. To support this, the Coyotos project is concurrently developing a new programming language called BitC and a new compiler called BitCC.

[edit] Microkernel

Coyotos uses a microkernel design which "retains the atomicity and pure capability-based design of the EROS system"[4], but which uses a new asynchronous communications model, and "introduces a more efficient memory mapping mechanism". Compare this with the Mach and L4 family of microkernels.