Singularity

If you are into reading hardcore stuff about compiler techniques, jit, computer architecture etc. - just a couple of times are year, this topic from Microsoft Research is for you. Microsoft Research has created a new OS callled Singularity. The purpose of it is to investigate how an OS should be built from scratch if the goal is to provide dependability and trustworthiness. An interesting paper worth a read. The RDK - Resource Devlopment Kit is found here. And you can even get the runable code from Codeplex.

After reading the research paper Singularity: Rethinking the Software Stack (only 13 pages), it came to my mind that the architecture principle of channels - e.g. a process can only communicate with other processes through well-defined channels - could be used as an interprocess communication methods and make it much easier to build high-performance distributed systems. Imagine a situation where processes can simply be put anywhere (within the limits of the required bandwidth and latency). This would enable us to use a pool of resources much more efficient and e.g. simply offload the device you are using onto other devices nearby.