One of the fundamental trends of computing in the 90's is the emphasis on communication and networking between computers, especially through the Internet. Another important trend is the rise of platform independent applications and application development environments like Java [1], by Sun Microsystems.
The current networking and platform independent application solutions are generally built on top of existing operating systems, such as various Unix variants and different versions of Windows. This has been a good way to introduce new technologies without forcing the users to move to a completely new environment, but on the other hand some compromises have been made in the area of security and performance.
Noticing that the current solutions are not adequate for future networked computers and devices, the people in the Computing Sciences Research Center (CSRC) at Lucent Technologies started working on a completely new operating system, Inferno [2], built from the ground up with networking, security and performance in mind. In addition to Inferno, a language called Limbo [3] was developed as a solution to the platform independence of applications.
Although no commercial systems based on Inferno and Limbo exist yet, the technology looks exiting enough to be given a closer look. This paper introduces the basic principles of Inferno and Limbo, along with comparisons to existing systems. In Chapter 2 the background behind these systems are presented, Chapter 3 and Chapter 4 present and analyze Inferno and Limbo respectively, Chapter 5 compares the Inferno/Limbo solution to the Java language and the Java OS, and Chapter 6 concludes.