List of Possible Paper Topics for CS239, Lecture 2

• Microkernels and OS organization
  • In depth study of a particular microkernel
    • Mach
    • Chorus
    • Plan 9
    • QNX
  • Performance issues for microkernels
  • Comparative study of pair of microkernels
  • Comparison of fundamental services offered by various microkernels
  • Extensibility mechanisms for microkernels
• Security
  • Key servers for large systems
  • System support for electronic commerce
  • Providing modular cryptography support
  • Providing encapsulated environments for secure operations
  • Study of a secure operating system
    • Secure Unix Kernel
    • Trusted Mach
    • Hydra
• IPC
  • Further study of uniform address space shared memory systems
  • System support for high-bandwidth IPC over networks (like video)
• File System issues
  • File systems in mobile computing
  • Client/server vs. peer-to-peer file replication
  • Providing consistency in distributed replicated file systems
  • Issues in improving file system performance
  • Very large scale/wide area file systems
  • Caching issues
    • Application-driven caching
    • Cooperative caching in a distributed system
• Fault-tolerance and reliability
  • Fault tolerance mechanisms for parallel processors
  • Design of Tandem's OS
• Distributed OSs
  • Locus
  • Clouds
  • Process migration
  • Distributed shared memory issues
• Mobile computing issues in operating systems
  • Adaptation to changing connectivity
  • Limiting power consumption in the OS
  • Replication for mobile computing
  • IPC for mobile computing
• Portability and heterogeneity
  • OS portability over different hardware architectures
  • Operating in heterogeneous environments
  • Building system software services to operate in different OSs
• Performance issues
  • Study of benchmark suites for OSs
  • Study of proper methods of measuring system performance
  • The role of simulation in evaluating OS performance
  • The role of mathematical modeling in evaluating OS performance
• Real time operating systems
  • Meeting deadlines in real-time OSs
  • Case studies
• Debugging aids for OS development
• Case studies of OSs that are no longer popular
  • Older IBM operating systems
  • Multics
  • Operating systems for Lisp machines
• Special purpose operating systems
  • Operating systems for simulation
  • Operating systems for small/limited architectures
  • Operating systems for switches or other communications devices
  • Operating systems for "Internet" computers