40 years later .... a new engine to handle an operating system infrastructure Jean-Louis La tte GATE Informatic SA - Switzerland la tte@acm.org 1. BACKGROUND A new hardware engine is proposed for managing and enforcing overall operating system infra-structure (as well as its subsystems and main applications). We generalize Goldberg s Hardware Virtualizer, which lead to so-called interpretive mode , under the form of a Generalized Mapping Device, allowing an integration of Control Program basic primitives within the machine organization. This proposed engine is advocated, within the scope of this paper, as the necessary backbone to strengthen an ancient (though still widely used) operating system, namely the MVS overall structure, using the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the S/360, the (in-)famous Mainframe. Our approach, exempli ed through a general purpose structure, potentially encompasses multiple disciplines including microcode, compilers, algebraic topology; it could have potential bene ts for Access Methods, Data Base Manager, as well as OLAP, and could also help engineering computing in its heavy usage of meshes or grids. In a context of shared memory, it has already been successfully exercised in favor of the memory wall. Though part of the should-already-be-extinguished species, mainframes are nevertheless
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