KTK: configurable objects and invocations

The Kernel Toolkit (KTK) is an object-based operating system kernel and programming library that offers explicit support for on- and off-line object configuration. We first present the basic configuration mechanisms offered by KTK. We address the utility of KTK by reference to results that use these mechanisms for the dynamic configuration of an application-level abstraction in a parallel program: a global queue in a parallel branch-and-bound code for solving the travelling salesman problem (TSP). We also present results of additional performance gains, attained by online configuration of a second abstraction in TSP, a mutex lock protecting the global queue.<
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