From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on inbox.vuxu.org X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-0.8 required=5.0 tests=DKIM_INVALID,DKIM_SIGNED, MAILING_LIST_MULTI autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 Received: (qmail 2591 invoked from network); 2 Sep 2021 15:42:23 -0000 Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (45.79.103.53) by inbox.vuxu.org with ESMTPUTF8; 2 Sep 2021 15:42:23 -0000 Received: by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix, from userid 112) id BF45F9BA51; Fri, 3 Sep 2021 01:42:19 +1000 (AEST) Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 001F19BA1D; Fri, 3 Sep 2021 01:41:40 +1000 (AEST) Authentication-Results: minnie.tuhs.org; dkim=fail reason="key not found in DNS" (0-bit key; unprotected) header.d=kev009.com header.i=@kev009.com header.b="YusPriDc"; dkim-atps=neutral Received: by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix, from userid 112) id 8C3979BA1D; Fri, 3 Sep 2021 01:41:38 +1000 (AEST) Received: from mail-lj1-f169.google.com (mail-lj1-f169.google.com [209.85.208.169]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id C876A9B9F9 for ; Fri, 3 Sep 2021 01:41:37 +1000 (AEST) Received: by mail-lj1-f169.google.com with SMTP id j12so4363282ljg.10 for ; Thu, 02 Sep 2021 08:41:37 -0700 (PDT) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=kev009.com; s=google; h=mime-version:references:in-reply-to:from:date:message-id:subject:to :cc:content-transfer-encoding; bh=stbia3LIpMyOQbSCyJ86fdqEjqlUljxDMTlBHHRVWeM=; b=YusPriDc/7RqszoCFrWJ9nKprklS65YEBA+8CH2Q2DdNdizIn0vi+FH7s2/3X+ySiD Z2jfI1HhAp58r7XY1U5xfOEuLbgsT/2aAJwLg8cI3E09PvpjI2ncK3CmHm7nclLCRHSe 8mrA8e2GrlMptWg+X5/BEHDqTLHh9OZ9m2S70= X-Google-DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=1e100.net; s=20161025; h=x-gm-message-state:mime-version:references:in-reply-to:from:date :message-id:subject:to:cc:content-transfer-encoding; bh=stbia3LIpMyOQbSCyJ86fdqEjqlUljxDMTlBHHRVWeM=; b=TRU08JZDfQlZjwzuRPJH37a/HG0aF0jVY4nRv1Wb3qGIkHZzIrAJGA/ikB1/ZI7AHm tmEaG0CpzNkDw/c1nCmTXSqLaLdbsxVS7mePQaJVEbzImWrujdP5E4gdfA+52zql0R/b U3v8DTL8KC6XhO/XzECbZdcEHUVgA2726EZRYJDyqzpe5dHtyoiwARoXc9vyBUXp5st4 IMNw1Me5nkE9UqHP5P73ET/pafXgt9ZIf3hpOdZ0U3NmXX0om1FuWr3tzfHRbZvuEro9 fdAnrWKr3pVB9wBNGkJY8AmxXTA+2QTblnNWW8N8NDF1KwuBlmXRs7UhRvw5xj2IkBPx Rv3w== X-Gm-Message-State: AOAM530pVKny+Va2oULIT9YQ+Bg3Eg1iX3k3B/5JK7HuwY3CChLQL1wA nOQ7R+joavfy853ASb2ppjv/1tQXeDdJ/WfFKFlUMQ== X-Google-Smtp-Source: ABdhPJyt3mZrdHkNf2O79uGPIYduGVovH9cuoWVbqdo8P683J7Pkc2zdeIagfcsaYJFDDBKsOgVziucnrmcsRCIgjR0= X-Received: by 2002:a2e:350e:: with SMTP id z14mr3104084ljz.183.1630597295708; Thu, 02 Sep 2021 08:41:35 -0700 (PDT) MIME-Version: 1.0 References: In-Reply-To: From: Kevin Bowling Date: Thu, 2 Sep 2021 08:41:23 -0700 Message-ID: To: Dan Cross Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Subject: Re: [TUHS] ATC/OSDI'21 joint keynote: It's Time for Operating Systems to Rediscover Hardware (Timothy Roscoe) X-BeenThere: tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.26 Precedence: list List-Id: The Unix Heritage Society mailing list List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Cc: TUHS main list Errors-To: tuhs-bounces@minnie.tuhs.org Sender: "TUHS" On Wed, Sep 1, 2021 at 3:00 PM Dan Cross wrote: > > One of the things I really appreciate about participating in this communi= ty and studying Unix history (and the history of other systems) is that it = gives one firm intellectual ground from which to evaluate where one is goin= g: without understanding where one is and where one has been, it's difficul= t to assert that one isn't going sideways or completely backwards. Maybe ei= ther of those outcomes is appropriate at times (paradigms shift; we make mi= stakes; etc) but generally we want to be moving mostly forward. > > The danger when immersing ourselves in history, where we must consider an= d appreciate the set of problems that created the evolutionary paths leadin= g to the systems we are studying, is that our thinking can become calcified= in assuming that those systems continue to meet the needs of the problems = of today. It is therefore always important to reevaluate our base assumptio= ns in light of either disconfirming evidence or (in our specific case) chan= ging environments. > > To that end, I found Timothy Roscoe's (ETH) joint keynote address at ATC/= OSDI'21 particularly compelling. He argues that what we consider the "opera= ting system" is only controlling a fraction of a modern computer these days= , and that in many ways our models for what we consider "the computer" are = outdated and incomplete, resulting in systems that are artificially constra= ined, insecure, and with separate components that do not consider each othe= r and therefore frequently conflict. Further, hardware is ossifying around = the need to present a system interface that can be controlled by something = like Linux (used as a proxy more generally for a Unix-like operating system= ), simultaneously broadening the divide and making it ever more entrenched. > > Another theme in the presentation is that, to the limited extent the broa= der systems research community is actually approaching OS topics at all, it= is focusing almost exclusively on Linux in lieu of new, novel systems; whe= re non-Linux systems are featured (something like 3 accepted papers between= SOSP and OSDI in the last two years out of $n$), the described systems are= largely Linux-like. Here the presentation reminded me of Rob Pike's "Syste= ms Software Research is Irrelevant" talk (slides of which are available in = various places, though I know of no recording of that talk). > > Roscoe's challenge is that all of this should be seen as both a challenge= and an opportunity for new research into operating systems specifically: w= hat would it look like to take a holistic approach towards the hardware whe= n architecting a new system to drive all this hardware? We have new tools t= hat can make this tractable, so why don't we do it? Part of it is bias, but= part of it is that we've lost sight of the larger picture. My own question= is, have we become entrenched in the world of systems that are "good enoug= h"? > > Things he does NOT mention are system interfaces to userspace software; h= e doesn't seem to have any quibbles with, say, the Linux system call interf= ace, the process model, etc. He's mostly talking about taking into account = the hardware. Also, in fairness, his highlighting a "small" portion of the = system and saying, "that's what the OS drives!" sort of reminds me of the U= S voter maps that show vast tracts of largely unpopulated land colored a ce= rtain shade as having voted for a particular candidate, without normalizing= for population (land doesn't vote, people do, though in the US there is a = relationship between how these things impact the overall election for, say,= the presidency). > > I'm curious about other peoples' thoughts on the talk and the overall top= ic? > > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3D36myc8wQhLo > > - Dan C. One thing I've realized as the unit of computing becomes more and more abundant (one off HW->mainframes->minis->micros->servers->VMs->containers) the OS increasingly becomes less visible and other software components become more important. It's an implementation detail like a language runtime and software developers are increasingly ill equipped to work at this layer. Public cloud/*aaS is a major blow to interesting general purpose OS work in commercial computing since businesses increasingly outsource more and more of their workloads. The embedded (which includes phones/Fuschia, accelerator firmware/payload, RTOS etc) and academic (i.e. Cambridge CHERI) world may have to sustain OS research for the foreseeable future. There is plenty of systems work going on but it takes place in different ways, userspace systems are completely viable and do not require switching to microkernels. Intel's DPDK/SPDK as one ecosystem, Kubernetes as another - there is a ton of rich systems work in this ecosystem with eBPF/XDP etc, and I used to dismiss it but it is no longer possible to do so rationally. I would go as far as saying Kubernetes is _the_ datacenter OS and has subsumed Linux itself as the primary system abstraction for the next while.. even Microsoft has a native implementation on Server 2022. It looks different and smells different, but being able to program compute/storage/network fabric with one abstraction is the holy grail of cluster computing and interestingly it lets you swap the lower layer implementations out with less risk but also less fanfare. Regards, Kevin