ARX

转自：http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARX_(operating_system)

ARX (operating system)

ARX was a Mach-like operating system written inModula-2+ developed by Acorn Computers Ltd in the UK and the Acorn Research Centre (ARC) and Software Technology Laboratory and later Olivetti Research Center (ORC, when Olivetti bought out Acorn) atPalo Alto for their newARM RISC processors based Archimedes computers range. According to the project Application Manager^[3] during the project, Acorn was developing for it, Compiler for Acorn Modula-2 Extended Language (CAMEL inModula-2+^[4]) bootstrapping from an Acorn Extended Modula-2 (AEM2) compiler, though never released externally, it was ported to use it in SUN Unix machines,^[5] in an effort to port Sun's workstations SunNeWS to the Archimedes, and when Olivetti bought out Acorn, developed a compiler based on CAMEL for theModula-3 programming Language.^[6]

ARX was a pre-emptive multitasking, multithreading, multi-user operating system. Much of the OS ran in user mode and as a result suffered performance problems due to switches into kernel mode to perform mutexes, which led to the introduction of the SWP instruction to the instruction set of the ARM3 version of the ARM processor. It had support of optical (WORM) disks file system^[3] and featured a window system, a window toolkit (and a direct manipulationUser Interface editor^[7]) and an InterScript-based text editor, for enriched documents written in InterPress (an HTML precursor). The OS had to be fitted in a 512KBROM image.^[8] This suggests that ARX had amicrokernel-type design.

It was not finished in time to be fitted to the Acorn Archimedes range of computers, which shipped in 1987 with theArthur operating system, derived from the earlier MOS operating system from Acorn's earlier 8-bit BBC Micro range. Arthur was later superseded byRISC OS.

The Acorn Research Centre was bought out by Olivetti.

See also: RISC iX