KeyKOS is a
persistent, pure
capability-based
operating system for the
IBM S/370 mainframe
A mainframe computer, informally called a mainframe or big iron, is a computer used primarily by large organizations for critical applications like bulk data processing for tasks such as censuses, industry and consumer statistics, enterprise ...
computers. It allows
emulating the environments of
VM,
MVS, and Portable Operating System Interface (
POSIX). It is a predecessor of the
Extremely Reliable Operating System
Extremely Reliable Operating System (EROS) is an operating system developed starting in 1991 at the University of Pennsylvania, and then Johns Hopkins University, and The EROS Group, LLC. Features include automatic data and process persistence ...
(EROS), and its successor
operating systems,
CapROS
Capability-based Reliable Operating System (CapROS) is an operating system incorporating pure capability-based security. It features automatic persistence of data and processes, even across system reboots. Capability systems naturally support th ...
, and Coyotos. KeyKOS is a
nanokernel
In computer science, a microkernel (often abbreviated as μ-kernel) is the near-minimum amount of software that can provide the mechanisms needed to implement an operating system (OS). These mechanisms include low-level address space management, ...
-based operating system.
In the mid-1970s, development of KeyKOS began at
Tymshare, Inc., under the name
GNOSIS. In 1984,
McDonnell Douglas (MD) bought Tymshare. A year later MD spun off Key Logic, which bought GNOSIS and renamed it ''KeyKOS''.
References
External links
* , Norman Hardy
GNOSIS: A Prototype Operating System for the 1990s a 1979 paper, Tymshare Inc.
a 1988 paper, Key Logic, Inc.
{{Operating-system-stub
Nanokernels
Capability systems
Microkernel-based operating systems