@(#)NASA.proposal 1.3 91/06/26
.fo +CSRG NASA proposal++% .nr si 3n .nr PS 11 .nr VS 13 .nr LL 6i .nr OI 0.5i .sh 1 Summary The attached is an unsolicited proposal for NASA requesting funding for the support of the 4.4BSD project. This proposal has not been submitted to any other organization or NASA installation. .sh 2 Organization
.fo +CSRG NASA proposal++% .nr si 3n .nr PS 11 .nr VS 13 .nr LL 6i .nr OI 0.5i .sh 1 Summary The attached is an unsolicited proposal for NASA requesting funding for the support of the 4.4BSD project. This proposal has not been submitted to any other organization or NASA installation. .sh 2 Organization
Computer Systems Research Group 455 Evans Hall University of California Berkeley CA 94720.sh 2 "Type of organization" Educational .sh 2 "Principal Investigator"
Dr. Marshall Kirk McKusick 455 Evans Hall Computer Systems Research Group Computer Science Division University of California Berkeley, CA 94720 415-642-4948.sh 2 "Preliminary Discussions" .pp Preliminary discussions have been held with:
Thomas Woodrow Numerical Aerodynamic Simulation Division Systems Development Branch NASA Ames Research Center Mail Stop 258-5 Moffett Field, CA 94035 415-604-3966.sh 2 Funding .pp The funding requested is $100,000. The project will start September 1, 1991, and will last for one year. .bp .sh 1 Abstract .pp The primary goal of the 4.4BSD project is to incorporate leading edge research ideas in a stable and reliable implementation dealing with current problems in operating systems research. These research areas include networking protocols, virtual memory, shared memory, threads and multi-processing. The resulting system is widely used by other researchers in operating systems and network protocols and by vendor organizations. The most recent two releases made by the Computer Systems Research Group (CSRG), 4.2BSD and 4.3BSD, provide the core of the standard networking and/or operating system software for nearly all vendors of UNIX-based workstations and minicomputers. The network support in the current systems released by both the Open Software Foundation (OSF), OSF-1, and AT&T, System V Release 4, is based on that found in 4.3BSD. .pp A secondary goal of our research is to make an inexpensive, cutting-edge research system available to anyone without restrictions based on the inclusion of proprietary software or restrictive licensing. CSRG is unquestionably the largest current distributor of technologically advanced, freely redistributable software. .sh 1 "Project Description" .pp During the funding period, CSRG anticipates that it will complete its next major release, 4.4BSD. As soon as this release is complete, CSRG will begin work on a follow-on release, tentatively named 5BSD. The requested funding will support the development of software for both releases. .pp Current development efforts in the CSRG include many different areas. Some of them are as follows: .sh 2 "New Architecture Support" .pp The 4.4BSD release will support the 386/486 based PC architectures, Hewlett-Packard's (HP) Motorola 68000 based workstations and 9000/7000 RISC workstations, Digital Equipment Corporation's (DEC) DECstation, and Sun Microsystem's Sparcstations, as well as the traditional BSD platforms, DEC's VAX architectures and Computer Consoles' 6/32 architectures. We are moderately confident of having support for various MIPS workstations and the Data General Avion workstations as well. .sh 2 "New Virtual Memory" .pp We have already integrated and are currently testing a new virtual memory system derived from that of the Mach operating system distributed by Carnegie-Mellon University and ported to 4.3BSD by the University of Utah. Among the many new features provided by the new virtual memory implementation will be an integration of the buffer cache and virtual memory, shared memory, semaphores and memory mapped I/O. .sh 2 "File Systems" .pp The fast file system interface has been extended to allow greater flexibility and performance. We have also included a freely redistributable implementation of Sun Microsystem's Network File System (NFS), including the ability to run NFS over TCP. .sh 2 "Networking" We are in the process of integrating an implementation of the ISO OSI networking protocols into the existing socket interface and internal network architecture. This work includes a revised internal network architecture incorporating the best features of both the existing socket support and the ``streams'' layering presented in the Ninth Edition research version of UNIX. Both the local filesystem and networking interfaces improve on previous work with enhanced support for caching in layered architectures. These caching techniques are based, in part, on work done by Van Jacobson at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, and will be fully exploited by the TCP/IP networking protocols. We are investigating the applicability of these techniques to the OSI protocol suite as well. .sh 2 "Standards" .pp Members of the CSRG have been closely tracking industry standards, including ANSI C and the IEEE POSIX standards. In addition, members of the CSRG have served as technical reviewers for several of the IEEE POSIX standards groups. The 4.4BSD release will include ANSI C support as well as an IEEE POSIX 1003.1 standard operating system interface integrated with the existing system interface in such a way that both interfaces fully interoperate. We have also been closely tracking the POSIX 1003.2 and 1003.2a shell and utility standards, and have been updating our utilities to reflect that proposed standard. If these standards have been ratified by the time that we prepare to ship 4.4BSD, we expect to be compliant with them as well. We have been monitoring several other POSIX working groups, including POSIX 1003.4 (real-time), 1003.4a (multiprocessing), 1003.8 (networked filesystems), and 1003.12 (networking interfaces). We expect to prototype and eventually incorporate support for these standards as they come into existence. .sh 2 "Open Systems" .pp In an effort to make this research as widely available as possible, the CSRG is actively replacing the portions of the system that are proprietary with implementations that are freely redistributable. While it is expected that 4.4BSD will still require an AT&T source license, CSRG will offer a subset release which will not contain any proprietary source code and which will not require licenses other than the University of California's. (The only restriction on use or redistribution will be a requirement that due credit be given to the Regents of the University of California, except for any included Free Software Foundation software, which has more restrictive release requirements.) This subset release will be a bootable, usable system and will contain approximately 95% of the source code in the full release. At present, 75% of the utilities and much of the kernel is non-proprietary. .sh 2 "After 4.4BSD" .pp The first major project that will be done as part of the release after 4.4BSD will be support for multi-processors. The virtual memory system we are currently integrating already contains support for multiprocessors. The new internal network architecture, streams, will also be designed with multiprocessors in mind. As part of this future release, we will extend this support to the other major kernel subsystems including the networking, filesystem, and terminal handling. Appropriate user interfaces to multiprocessing, perhaps modeled on the POSIX 1003.4a interfaces, will be designed and implemented as well. .bp .sh 1 "Personnel" .pp There are five members of the CSRG research staff: Kirk McKusick, Mike Karels, Keith Bostic, Keith Sklower and Marc Teitelbaum. .pp Dr. McKusick received his undergraduate degree in Electrical Engineering from Cornell University. His graduate work was done at the University of California, where he received Masters degrees in Computer Science and Business Administration, and a Ph.D. in the area of programming languages. While at Berkeley he implemented the 4.2BSD fast file system and was involved in implementing the Berkeley Pascal system. He currently is the Research Computer Scientist at the Berkeley Computer Systems Research Group. He is president of the Usenix Association, a member of the editorial board of UNIX Review Magazine, and a member of ACM and IEEE. He is a co-author of the book ``The Design and Implementation of the 4.3BSD UNIX Operating System.'' .pp Michael J. Karels is the Principal Programmer of the Computer Systems Research Group at the University of California, Berkeley. Since the release of 4.2BSD, he has been the primary system architect for Berkeley UNIX, continuing the development of new versions of BSD. Michael Karels received his B.S. in Microbiology from the University of Notre Dame. He was the principal developer of the 2.9BSD UNIX release of the Berkeley Software Distribution for the PDP-11. He is a member of the ACM, the IEEE and the Internet Engineering Task force. He is a co-author of the book ``The Design and Implementation of the 4.3BSD UNIX Operating System.'' .pp A representative selection of CSRG's relevant publications are as follows: M. McKusick, M. Karels, K. Bostic, ``A Pageable Memory-Based Filesystem'', Proceedings of the Anaheim Usenix Conference, pp 137-144, June 1990. .lp M. McKusick, M. Karels, K. Bostic, ``The Release Engineering of 4.3BSD'', Proceedings of the New Orleans Usenix Workshop on Software Management, pp 95-100, April 1989. .lp M. McKusick, M. Karels, ``Design of a General Purpose Memory Allocator for the 4.3BSD UNIX Kernel'', Proceedings of the San Francisco Usenix Conference, pp 295-304, June 1988. .lp M. McKusick, M. Karels, ``Directions of UNIX at Berkeley'', Digest of Papers of the Thirty-second IEEE Computer Society International Conference, Compcon, San Francisco, pp. 196-199, February 23-27, 1987. .lp M. McKusick, M. Karels, ``A New Virtual Memory Implementation for Berkeley UNIX'', Proceedings of the European UNIX Users Group Meeting, Manchester, England, pp. 451-460, September 1986. .lp M. Karels, M. McKusick, ``Towards a Compatible Filesystem Interface'', Proceedings of the European UNIX Users Group Meeting, Manchester, England, pp. 481-496, September 1986. .bp .sh 1 "Facilities and Equipment" .pp Equipment for the CSRG is currently being provided by Computer Consoles Inc., Hewlett-Packard Corp. and Compaq Corporation. No additional equipment is required for the proposed project. .sh 1 "Proposed Costs" .pp The CSRG currently requires funding at a level of $31,179 per month for salaries and $6,800 for supplies and expenses such as equipment maintenance and power. Of the requested funding of $100,000, $48,000 will go directly to the University of California as overhead. The remaining $52,000 of funding will fund the CSRG for slightly under 1.5 months. Of course, NASA is not the only source of funding for the CSRG. Current funding is provided by the Open Software Foundation, Hewlett-Packard Corp. and Cray Research. .sh 1 "Current Projects" .pp No other current projects are being conducted by the principal investigator, or by other members of CSRG.
Marshall Kirk McKusick Research Computer Scientist, CSRG