The Mach 3.0 multi-server emulation system is a research effort conducted in collaboration between CMU and the Research Institute of OSF. The main goal is to study the issues and technologies involved in the development of collections of software components or servers that cooperate to emulate the high-level semantics and functionality of various modern operating systems, on top of a Mach 3.0 micro-kernel base. The current effort concentrates on the realization of a prototype for the emulation of UNIX 4.3 BSD.
This paper is divided in two major sections. The first section presents a brief discussion of the strategy and major design considerations for the development of this prototype, followed by an overview of the key elements and ideas underlying this design. The second section provides technical descriptions for most of the major areas of the design and implementation.