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The design of a computer system with a recursive, virtual machine architecture is presented and the motivations and considerations leading to this design are explained. In this system, each process operates in its own address space, called its virtual memory, and can create other processes within its space and pass control to them. The newly created processes can, recursively, create their own descendents without the knowledge or assistance of a supervisor. There is no privileged state; protection is provided entirely by the virtual memory mechanism, and each interrupt is directed by hardware to the process designated to handle it. Virtual memories are segmented; moreover, paging is treated as a recursive application of segmentation and can occur at any level. The machine architecture encourages modular and hierarchical approaches to program design because of the high degree of protection afforded by the creation of new virtual memories at low cost.
Author(s): Lauer HC, Wyeth D
Publication type: Report
Publication status: Published
Series Title: Computing Laboratory Technical Report Series
Year: 1973
Pages: 40
Report Number: 54
Institution: Computing Laboratory, University of Newcastle upon Tyne
Place Published: Newcastle upon Tyne
URL: http://www.cs.ncl.ac.uk/publications/trs/papers/54.pdf
