Microsoft developed a new operating system outside of Windows

Microsoft Research, the software giant's technology research unit, has invested in the successful development of the first prototype of an operating system with a small kernel with code-named 'Singularity'. This operating system does not have any involvement with Windows.

This is exactly the opposite of what we have known so far: Windows is not the only operating system that Microsoft invests in. Microsoft still has other strategic cards.

Microsoft Research had to start building Microsoft's new operating system from scratch to make a micro-kernel-based operating system with over 300,000 lines of code without any involvement. What to Windows.

In fact, the pace of Microsoft's new operating system development - codenamed ' Singularity ' - is relatively slow. Anyway, this operating system has been gradually forming skin so meat. New Microsoft Research recently released a technical research report up to 44 pages about Singularity on the new operating system research project website. Besides, Microsoft officials also made a public discussion of the new operating system issue at the USENIX conference in June. And earlier this week, Singularity was present and attracted a lot of attention at Slashdot.

'What is an operating system developed from zero with the ultimate goal of reliability? 'This is the question that Singularity development research team had to find answers for over 2 years.

' Singularity is not Windows. We had to build all the lines of this operating system from scratch, from zero 'Galen Hunt, senior research specialist at Microsoft Research in the Singularity project.

Hunt said Singularity is the current largest project at Microsoft Research, involving about 35 experts in areas such as systems, networking, programming, testing and many other research teams.

Like many other Microsoft projects, the Singularity project is still not completely defined for commercialization. Microsoft will be able to commercialize the operating system or embed Singularity components into other products or simply rely on lessons learned from this project to highlight efforts. Microsoft only.

However, Microsoft's research and development work on Singularity is contributing to producing a lot of ideas for the architects' team at the Core Operating System (COSD). and Microsoft's security research team, Hunt said. COSD's work today is contributing to reducing dependency among the sub-operating systems that constitute Windows. The security research team is trying to struggle with the requirement of federal identity as well as systemic challenges.

' We had the idea of ​​how to minimize dependence when building an operating system from scratch,' Hunt said. ' This is an idea of ​​technology transfer .'

Hypothetically, Singularity may not be able to function as a server operating system like something similar to Microsoft BigTop. BigTop is the code name of Microsoft internal distribution system infrastructure project. This project has not been released yet.

In short, we can say that every part of Singularity will find its place in an embedded operating system or on the server operating system market or both.

Singularity is a testament to the existence of managed code even though the operating system is not the first operating system to be built and developed entirely based on managed code.

However, currently this operation is being developed by the combination of C # programming language of Microsoft as well as some other languages ​​developed from C # - known as Sing # language (Sing # originated primarily from Spec # that Spec # is also derived from C #).

Due to being fully developed based on C # programming language, Singularity does not use any Common Language Runtime (CLR) of Microsoft or Java virtual machine. Instead Singularity is based on 'Bartok' - a programming and running environment developed by Microsoft-Research.

Interested readers, please download and refer to the Microsoft research report here. ( Document written in English ).