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A NonStop kernel

Joel F. Bartlett

Open publisher page 249 citations

Abstract

The Tandem NonStop System is a fault-tolerant [1], expandable, and distributed computer system designed expressly for online transaction processing. This paper describes the key primitives of the kernel of the operating system. The first section describes the basic hardware building blocks and introduces their software analogs: processes and messages. Using these primitives, a mechanism that allows fault-tolerant resource access, the process-pair, is described. The paper concludes with some observations on this type of system structure and on actual use of the system.

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What this paper is about

The Tandem NonStop System is a fault-tolerant [1], expandable, and distributed computer system designed expressly for online transaction processing. This paper describes the key primitives of the kernel of the operating system. The first section describes the basic hardware building blocks and introduces their software analogs: processes and messages. Using these primitives, a mechanism that allows fault-tolerant resource access, the process-pair, is described. The paper concludes with some observations on this type of system structure and on actual use of the system.

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OpenAlex reports 249 citations for this work. Citation counts describe recorded attention and do not establish research quality.

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Available abstract

The Tandem NonStop System is a fault-tolerant [1], expandable, and distributed computer system designed expressly for online transaction processing. This paper describes the key primitives of the kernel of the operating system. The first section describes the basic hardware building blocks and introduces their software analogs: processes and messages. Using these primitives, a mechanism that allows fault-tolerant resource access, the process-pair, is described. The paper concludes with some observations on this type of system structure and on actual use of the system.

Key concepts: NonStop, Computer science, Operating system, Kernel (algebra), Key (lock), Fault tolerance, Database transaction, Process (computing)

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