© University of Kent - Contact | Feedback | Legal
The University of Kent, Canterbury, Kent, CT2 7NZ, T +44 (0)1227 764000
A process oriented approach to USB driver development
Carl G. Ritson and Frederick R.M. Barnes
In Alistair A. McEwan, Steve Schneider, Wilson Ifill, and Peter Welch, editors, Communicating Process Architectures 2007, volume 65 of Concurrent Systems Engineering Series, pages 323-338, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, July 2007. IOS Press.Abstract
Operating-systems are the core software component of many modern computer systems, ranging from small specialised embedded systems through to large distributed operating-systems. The demands placed upon these systems are increasingly complex, in particular the need to handle concurrency: to exploit increasingly parallel (multicore) hardware; support increasing numbers of user and system processes; and to take advantage of increasingly distributed and decentralised systems. The languages and designs that existing operating-systems employ provide little support for concurrency, leading to unmanageable programming complexities and ultimately errors in the resulting systems; hard to detect, hard to remove, and almost impossible to prove correct.
Implemented in occam-pi, a CSP derived language that provides guarantees of freedom from race-hazards and aliasing error, the RMoX operating-system represents a novel approach to operating-systems, utilising concurrency at all levels to simplify design and implementation. This paper presents the USB (universal serial bus) devicedriver infrastructure used in the RMoX system, demonstrating that a highly concurrent process-orientated approach to device-driver design and implementation is feasible, efficient and results in systems that are reliable, secure and scalable.
Download publication 155 kbytes (PDF)
Bibtex Record
@inproceedings{2678,
author = {Carl G. Ritson and Frederick R.M. Barnes},
title = {A Process Oriented Approach to {USB} Driver Development},
month = {July},
year = {2007},
pages = {323-338},
keywords = {concurrency, occam-pi, operating-systems, USB, PC/104, device-drivers},
note = {},
doi = {},
url = {http://www.cs.kent.ac.uk/pubs/2007/2678},
publication_type = {inproceedings},
submission_id = {24494_1205782955},
ISBN = {978-1-58603-767-3},
booktitle = {Communicating Process Architectures 2007},
editor = {Alistair A. McEwan and Steve Schneider and Wilson Ifill and Peter Welch},
volume = {65},
series = {Concurrent Systems Engineering Series},
address = {Amsterdam, The Netherlands},
publisher = {IOS Press},
ISSN = {1383-7575},
refereed = {yes},
}