Pintos
Pintos is computer software, a simple instructional operating system framework for the x86 instruction set architecture. It supports kernel threads, loading and running user programs, and a file system, but it implements all of these in a very simple way. It was created at Stanford University by Ben Pfaff in 2004.[1] It originated as a replacement for Not Another Completely Heuristic Operating System (Nachos), a similar system originally developed at UC Berkeley by Thomas E. Anderson, and was designed along similar lines.[2] Like Nachos, Pintos is intended to introduce undergraduates to concepts in operating system design and implementation by requiring them to implement significant portions of a real operating system, including thread and memory management and file system access. Pintos also teaches students valuable debugging skills.
| Original author(s) | Ben Pfaff |
|---|---|
| Developer(s) | Ben Pfaff |
| Initial release | 2004 |
| Written in | C |
| Platform | x86 |
| Available in | English |
| License | BSD-like |
| Website | www |
Unlike Nachos, Pintos can run on actual x86 hardware, though it is often run atop an x86 emulator, such as Bochs or QEMU. Nachos, by contrast, runs as a user process on a host operating system, and targets the MIPS architecture (Nachos code must run atop a MIPS simulator).[2] Pintos and its accompanying assignments are also written in the programming language C instead of C++ (used for original Nachos) or Java (used for Nachos 5.0j).
Pintos is currently used by multiple institutions, including UC Berkeley[3] and Imperial College London,[4] as an academic aid in Operating Systems class curriculums.
References
- Pintos, by Ben Pfaff, PDF
- "Pintos Projects: Introduction". Retrieved 2007-04-17.
- https://cs162.eecs.berkeley.edu/
- "OS Lab Project". Imperial College London. Retrieved 2020-12-01.