Building Reconfigurable Component-Based OS with THINK

Dynamic reconfiguration allows modifying a system during its execution, and can be used to apply patches and updates, to implement adaptive systems, dynamic instrumentation, or to support third-party modules. Dynamic reconfiguration is important in embedded systems, where one does not necessarily have the luxury to stop a running system. While several proposals have been presented in the litterature supporting dynamic reconfiguration in operating system kernels, these proposals in general hardwire a fixed reconfiguration mechanism, which may be far from optimal in certain configurations. In this paper, we present a software-architecture-based approach to the construction of operating systems, and we show that it allows us 1/ to support different mechanisms for dynamic reconfiguration, and 2/ to select between them at build time, with little or no changes in operating system and application components. Our approach relies on the use of a reflective component model and of its associated...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2006
• Where: EUROMICRO
• Authors: Juraj Polakovic, Ali Erdem Özcan, Jean-Bernard Stefani
• Keywords: Dynamic Reconfiguration, EUROMICRO 2006, Operating System, Reconfiguration Mechanism, Software Engineering