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<A HREF="/software/hurd/gnumach.html"><STRONG>GNU Mach</STRONG></A><BR>
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<A HREF="/software/hurd/gnumach-docs.html">Documentation</A><BR>
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<H3><A NAME="contents">Table of Contents</A></H3>
<UL>
<LI><A HREF="#introduction" NAME="TOCintroduction">Introduction to Mach</A>
<LI><A HREF="#advantages" NAME="TOCadvantages">Advantages of GNU Mach</A>
<LI><A HREF="#status" NAME="TOCstatus">Status of the project</A>
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<H3><A HREF="#TOCintroduction" NAME="introduction">Introduction to GNU Mach</A></H3>
<P>
GNU Mach is the microkernel of the GNU system. A microkernel provides
only a limited functionality, just enough abstraction on top of the
hardware to run the rest of the operating system in user space. The
GNU Hurd servers and the GNU C library implement the POSIX compatible
base of the GNU system on top of the microkernel architecture provided
by Mach.
<P>
Currently, GNU Mach runs on IA32 machines. GNU Mach should, and
probably will, be ported to other hardware architectures in the
future. Mach was ported to many operating systems in the past.
<P>
GNU Mach is maintained by the Hurd developers for the GNU project. If
you need help with GNU Mach or want to contribute to the development
of the microkernel, you should <A
HREF="/software/hurd/help.html">contact the Hurd people</A>.
<H3><A HREF="#TOCadvantages" NAME="advantages">Advantages of GNU Mach</A></H3>
GNU Mach is not the most advanced microkernel known to the planet, nor
is it the fastest or smallest, but it has a rich set of interfaces and
some features which make it useful as the base of the Hurd system.
<DL>
<DT><STRONG>it's free software</STRONG></DT>
<DD>
Anybody can use, modify, and redistribute it under the terms of the
<A HREF="/copyleft/gpl.html">GNU General Public License (GPL)</A>.</DD>
</DD>
<DT><STRONG>it's built to survive</STRONG></DT>
<DD>
As a microkernel, GNU Mach doesn't implement a lot of the features
commonly found in an operating system, but only the bare minimum that
is required to implement a full operating system on top of it. This
means that a lot of the operating system code is maintained outside of
GNU Mach, and while this code may go through a complete redesign, the
code of the microkernel can remain comparatively stable.
</DD>
<DT><STRONG>it's scalable</STRONG></DT>
<DD>
Mach is particularly well suited for SMP and network cluster
techniques. Thread support is provided at the kernel level, and the
kernel itself takes advantage of that. Network transparency at the
IPC level makes resources of the system available across machine
boundaries (with NORMA IPC, currently not available in GNU Mach).
</DD>
<DT><STRONG>it exists</STRONG></DT>
<DD>
The Mach microkernel is real software that works Right Now. It is not
a research or a proposal. You don't have to wait at all before you
can start using and developing it. Mach has been used in many
operating systems in the past, usually as the base for a single UNIX
server. In the GNU system, Mach is the base of a functional
multi-server operating system, the Hurd.
</DD>
</DL>
<H3><A HREF="#TOCstatus" NAME="status">Status of the project</A></H3>
<P>
GNU Mach is used as the default microkernel in the GNU/Hurd system.
It is compatible with other popular Mach distributions. The device
drivers for block devices and network cards are taken from Linux 2.0.x
kernel versions, and so a broad range of common hardware is supported.
<P>
However, the Linux device drivers have been improved greatly since the
2.0.x version, and a new version of Mach based on the OSKit library is
being worked on, which uses newer drivers and in general has cleaner
machine specific support code.
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