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Alexia Massalin (formerly Henry Massalin) is an American computer scientist and programmer. She pioneered the concept of superoptimization, and designed the Synthesis kernel, a small kernel with a Unix compatibility layer that makes heavy use of self-modifying code for efficiency.
Jul 2, 2019 · Alexia Massalin’s 1992 PhD thesis has long been one of my favorites. It promotes the view that operating systems can be much more efficient than then-current operating systems via runtime code generation, lock-free synchronization, and fine-grained scheduling.
May 5, 2016 · Alexia Massalin has filed for patents to protect the following inventions. This listing includes patent applications that are pending as well as patents that have already been granted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).
Alexia Massalin (formerly Henry Massalin) is an American computer scientist and programmer. She pioneered the concept of superoptimization, and designed the Synthesis kernel , a small kernel with a Unix compatibility layer that makes heavy use of self-modifying code for efficiency.
- Run-Time Code Generation
- Quajects
- Optimistic Lock-Free Synchronization
- Synthesis: Operating System of The Future?
The name "Synthesis" comes from run-time code generation - codesynthesis - used to optimize and re-optimize kernel routines inresponse to changing conditions. The concept of optimizing codeduring run-time is by now familiar to many programmers in part fromTransmeta's processor-level code optimization, used to lower powerconsumption (and many progra...
Understanding run-time code generation is a prerequisite forunderstanding quajects, the basic unit out of which the Synthesiskernel is constructed. Quajects are almost but not quite entirelyunlike objects. Like objects, quajects come in types - queue quaject,thread quaject, buffer quaject - and encapsulate all the dataassociated with the quaject. U...
Most modern operating systems use a combination of interrupt disablingand locks to synchronize access to shared data structures andguarantee single-threaded execution of critical sections in general.The most popular synchronization primitive in Linux is the spinlock,implemented with the nearly universal test-and-set-bit atomicoperation. When one th...
The design principles of Synthesis, while powerful and generic, stillhave some major drawbacks. The algorithms are difficult to understandand implement for regular human beings (or kernel programmers, forthat matter). As Linux has demonstrated, making kernel developmentsimple enough that a wide variety of people can contribute has somesignificant p...
The Synthesis kernel presented in Alexia Massalin's Ph.D. thesis is a tiny Unix kernel that takes a structured, or even object oriented, approach to self-modifying code, where code is created for individual quajects, like filehandles.
Alexia Massalin (formerly Henry Massalin) is an American computer scientist and programmer. She pioneered the concept of superoptimization, and designed the Synthesis kernel, a small kernel with a Unix compatibility layer that makes heavy use of self-modifying code for efficiency.
