The Real Future of Windows: "Singularity" ?

Microsoft watch writes that Microsoft research has been building a new micro kernel based OS from scratch. And it’s all written in managed code!

Not completely in C# though (and not in VB.NET either ), but also a portion in Sing# which is a derivative of Spec#, which is derived from C#. The main goal of the research project is to build an OS which is more or less Plug and Play, in the sense that there is much less dependability between the sub-systems inside the OS. This meakes it easier to add or replace functionality.

Interestingly, the kernel does not run on CLR, but on “Bartok,” a Microsoft-Research-developed compiler and run-time environment.

Furthermore, as the article mentiones:

Singularity also could, hypothetically, act as the host operating system for something like Microsoft BigTop. BigTop is the code-name for a still-unannounced internal Microsoft distributed-systems infrastructure project.

At the PDC there was also some attention for cluster computing. I think this is a real interesting development with respect to Google. As most people know, Google is also running their massive search engine (and other stuff) on a gigantic set of clustered computers. Having this capability at Microsoft will pose an interesting challenge to Google I think…