The E1 project is based on the results achieved by other researchers in the areas of distributed operating systems, microkernels, group communication systems, replication algorithms and component models. This page contains references to scientific projects that influenced the design of E1.

On the low level E1 relies on a microkernel, which provides a minimal set of primitives, required for operating system construction >>. We are planning to use the L4 (Pistachio) microkernel, developed in the University of Karlsruhe.

L4 Kernel Architecture project

Globe is a middleware system, developed in Vrije University. Distributed system's resources in Globe are represented by distributed shared objects. Distributed shared objects are implemented as a collection of local representatives that communicate and provide the user of the object with the illusion of shared state. In its turn, representative is composed of several local objects including semantics object which stores distributed object's state and performs operations on it, and replication object, which synchronizes semantics objects in different nodes. A similar distributed object architecture is implemented in E1. However, the E1 object model is implemented on the operating system level rather than in middleware. Therefore, we use more simple and lightweight distributed object structure >>

Globe Project

In E1 distributed object replicas communicate by means of Group Remote Procedure Call mechanism >> based on the group communication system. Development of group communication system from scratch is a rather complicated task, which comprises implementation of message delivery and group membership algorithms. Therefore, we plan to build the E1 group communication system on one of the existing implementations.