# <a name="The_Coyotos_microkernel"> The Coyotos microkernel </a>

[Coyotos](http://www.coyotos.org/index.html) is a microkernel and OS and the successor of EROS, that itself is the successor of KeyKOS. A more complete history can be found [here](http://www.coyotos.org/history.html). Its main objectives are to correcte some shortcomings of EROS, demonstrate that an atomic kernel design scales well, and (eventually) to completely formally verify both the kernel and critical system components by writing them in a new language called [bitc](http://www.bitc-lang.org/).  [See [l4.verified](http://nicta.com.au/research/projects/l4.verified) for work on formally verifying an L4 microkernel.]

Coyotos is an orthogonally persistent pure capability system. It uses
continuation based unbuffered asynchronous IPC (actually it's synchronous IPC
with asynchronous [[system calls]]).

TODO: explain these terms and (more important) their consequences on system design.

The coyotos microkernel specification can be found [here](http://www.coyotos.org/docs/ukernel/spec.html)