The aeon Project
Created On : 20th Dec. 2001
Last updated : 10:36 AM 1st December 2002
Mission Statement: To deliver a robust, reliable and evolving platform (in the form of an OS) for scientific research and the common man; providing out of the box support for fuzzy logic, object oriented paradigm, parallel and distributed processing.
About aeon Project: Though the name 'aeon' was coined today (7:15 PM 20th Dec. 2001), I (V.Ganesh) though of this project when I was in my 3rd semester at ISSC for Master's degree in Computer Science. Actually the word aeon (pronounced ee-on) means an immense time, an age or an indefinably long period of time. And I would like the 'aeon Project' to be out there for the people (specially scientists) for an aeon :). The specifications and ideas of the aeon project is very preliminary and currently are only my view. I don't want it to be like that and would like it to be an amalgamation of ideas from various minds and brains (ofcourse if they are different ;)). Infact I want to replace all I's with We's as soon as possible... So all those interested please take some pain in reading a bit more about my current ideas and get involved...
Detailed overview of the aeon Project:
aeon as an OS will be built around a micro kernel architecture (*). The micro kernel will basically manage the core H/W which will provide certain services to the core kernel. The core kernel will be a Virtual Machine built around the Java (TM) Virtual Machine (JVM) specifications. The Virtual Machine will provide the services of object oriented paradigm, parallel and distributed processing and fuzzy logic support.
Since the JVM currently doesn't internally support fuzzy logic (it only supports boolean logic) there are two possible ways out:
1) Make a new JVM that has inbuilt support for fuzzy operations.
2) Keep the existing JVM and provide APIs for fuzzy operations.
Each of these approaches has some advantages and disadvantages. Thus the feasibility of each of these approaches is to be studied and appropriate way chosen.
The parallel and distributed processing APIs for JVM are widely available and will be customized for aeon. Since I want to follow an Object Oriented approach towards aeon, I would like every thing on aeon to be Objects. The devices will be objects, the disk will be viewed as an object store and so on...
I have not yet worked on as to how the complete thing should fit in, we have to discuss it!
aeon should provide out for the box support for tools for Numerical methods, visualization, modeling, simulation, virtual reality, genetic engineering and parallel algorithms. It should support industry standard HTML and XML parser for data presentation and data delivery.
aeon should support only TCP/IPv4 and TCP/IPv6 for networking. For those devices that don't support TCP like WAP devices an simulation of TCP will have to be incorporated via Virtual Machine. You might be well worrying how could you be running a computationally intensive aeon on a device like a Nokia phone? Yes, but by the time we are with the first version of aeon, Nokias will be like today's PC with lots for processing power in them (shouldn't we utilize it for scientific research?). That is how we can progress in leaps and bounds... and some day aeon will help those Nokians to built better phones (or mind phones) .. who knows.. :)
aeon will be an Open Source project with all the advantages and disadvantages (are there any... please tell me if there are any ;)) of the GNU's (where GNU is Not Unix !) Open Source License agreement.
Well said?
So, where do we get started?
I have created the following on-line tools for our interaction and development process:
The plan for project schedule is to be shortly discussed. The schedules will be put on this site as and when they get ready.
To get an access to preliminary aeon OS design click here.
Web Site (for latest on aeon project): https://v-ganesh.tripod.com/research/aeon/index.html
E-mail (for e-mail interaction): aeonproject@hotmail.com
Chat (to discuss ideas): (to be made available)
Source Forge (for source/binary maintenance): username: aeonproject, password: opensource
I am pleased to inform that aeon project has been accepted at sourceforge.net and its site is accessibe at http://aeonproject.sourceforge.net . An alternative site has also been opened at http://aeonproject.tripod.com . People are most welcome to maintain the tripod site! We need U.
Early phase of understanding the hardware architecture (Intel based) has been initiated. The current status is can be checking here. And the design status will be available here.
* - For more information on micro kernel architecture refer to "Operating Systems Concepts" by Silberschatz and Galvin.