Darwin
1. <operating system> An operating system based on the FreeBSD version of
Unix, running on top of a microkernel (Mach 3.0 with darwin 1.02) that offers
advanced networking, services such as the Apache web server, and support for
both Macintosh and Unix file systems. Darwin was originally released in March
1999. It currently runs on PowerPC based Macintosh computers, and, in October
2000, was being ported to Intel processor-based computers and compatible systems
by the Darwin community.
2. <programming, tool> A general purpose structuring tool of use in
building complex distributed systems from diverse components and diverse
component interaction mechanisms. Darwin is being developed by the Distributed
Software Engineering Section of the Department of Computing at Imperial College.
It is in essence a declarative binding language which can be used to define
hierarchic compositions of interconnected components. Distribution is dealt with
orthogonally to system structuring. The language allows the specification of
both static structures and dynamic structures which evolve during execution. The
central abstractions managed by Darwin are components and services. Bindings are
formed by manipulating references to services.
The operational semantics of Darwin is described in terms of the Pi-calculus,
Milner's calculus of mobile processes. The correspondence between the treatment
of names in the Pi-calculus and the management of service references in Darwin
leads to an elegant and concise Pi-calculus model of Darwin's operational
semantics. The model has proved useful in arguing the correctness of Darwin
implementations and in designing extensions to Darwin and reasoning about their
behaviour.
Distributed Software Engineering Section. Darwin publications.
E-mail: Jeff Magee <jnm@doc.ic.ac.uk>, Naranker Dulay
<nd@doc.ic.ac.uk>.
3. Core War.
(2003-08-08)
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