This page is part of an archival collection and is no longer actively maintained.

It may contain outdated information and may not meet current or future WCAG accessibility standards. We provide this content, its subpages, and associated links for historical reference only. If you need assistance, please contact support@cs.washington.edu

SPIN
What if this were really really really important text up here?

THE
SPIN OPERATING SYSTEM

[Global SPIN - 176K]
SPIN is an operating system that blurs the distinction between kernels and applications. Applications traditionally live in user-level address spaces, separated from kernel resources and services by an expensive protection boundary. With SPIN, applications can specialize the kernel by dynamically linking new code into the running system. Kernel extensions can add new kernel services, replace default policies, or simply migrate application functionality into the kernel address space. Sensitive kernel interfaces are secured via a restricted linker and the type-safe properties of the Modula-3 programming language. The result is a flexible operating system that helps applications run fast but doesn't crash.
We have used SPIN to implement a wide variety of demanding applications and services. For instance, the SPIN Web server executes entirely in the kernel address space. This allows it to access the network and the local disk with low latency. The Web server application, as well as the file system interface, entire network protocol stack, and device infrastructure are all linked into the system after it boots. You can connect to a SPIN machine running the in-kernel Web server to test it out.
-> Source Distribution Source release of SPIN for the x86.
-> SPIN Overview Brief overview of SPIN, including benchmarks and information on Modula-3.
-> Research Projects As an extensible system, SPIN is an excellent platform for operating systems research. These are some mature and ongoing projects.
-> Project Members Who we are.
-> Paper Trail Project Reports, Talks, Papers, etc. Features publications from OSDI '96, PLDI '96, WCSSS '96, Winter '96 Usenix, and SOSP '95.
-> Acknowledgements We've gotten a lot of assistance from academia, industry, and the government on this project. This page says who we're involved with.
-> Related Work Pointers to other projects in extensible systems.

spin@cs.washington.edu
Department of Computer Science and Engineering
University of Washington