MAGNET: a virtual shared tuplespace resource manager

Traditional operating systems limit flexibility, performance and utilization of hardware resources by forcing applications to use inappropriate high level abstractions, uniform protection schemes and high level static resource management. This forced use of inappropriate services results in poor application and operating system performance. A radical new approach to operating systems design and construction is needed to meet the requirements of modern applications. Within our Centre, we are building BITS: the Component Based Operating System, to address these issues. To realize its full potential, BITS requires a radically new resource management strategy. The operating system design gives an environment for implementing extensions, but a resource manager module is responsible for making them available. It allows system services to be specialized, replaced or extended to better serve application specific needs. We propose the MAGNET Resource Manager enabling a free market negotiation of application requests and server resources. It provides an additional level of flexibility for application participation in resource management. MAGNET also provides an ideal platform for an additional runtime level of extensibility: dynamic modification and replacement of its parts during execution.