Amoeba distributed operating system

Amoeba (English for amoeba ) is a distributed operating system that was developed by Andrew S. Tanenbaum and his colleagues at the Free University of Amsterdam. The aim of the project was to each user to give the illusion of a separate machine, even though the system is distributed on many computers that can possibly far apart, such as in different countries are.

The Python programming language was originally developed for Amoeba.

The system

Amoeba uses for each user an own diskless workstations. Further computers serve as a pool processors, which are available on request and released. Special services such as file servers, directory services and databases are provided by own special computers available. All local computers to communicate with each other via the Fast Local Internet Protocol. Gateways connect remote computers together into a unified system.

The system is object -based, where each object and its operations allowed are identified by the so-called capabilities. Each object is connected to a server process that is accessed by the user program via a remote procedure call.

Amoeba uses a microkernel. At the Free University Amsterdam ( Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam) constitute about 80 SPARC-E inprozessorsysteme that are networked via Ethernet, an Amoeba processor pool. The system also runs on Intel x86 and Motorola 68030 processors. It has been for several years now.

Worldwide networking

Amoeba systems can be networked world and then into domains ( domains) divided. Within a domain, which normally includes the computers on your LAN, can the server for a service by a network broadcast, the locate request, be determined. Between domains, they must explicitly registered in a directory service, that is to be published. A local server responds to the locate request and informs a server on the remote LAN. The communication takes place via the proxy server. This has the following advantages

  • The local communications takes place with maximum speeds without placement process.
  • The communication with remote computers is no different for the servers and clients on the local communication.
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