[cap-talk] Capability-based Projects - updated list

[Bill Tulloh]

Here is an updated but still incomplete (and undoubtedly, at times,
erroneous) list of capability-based projects of which I'm aware. This
is meant to partially answer Jed's questions about capability-based
design projects during the 80s and 90s. While activity didn't die
completely during this period, it did diminish significantly.

As noted previously
(http://www.eros-os.org/pipermail/cap-talk/2006-August/005534.html)
the history seems to fit nicely into decades.

1965-1974: (14 projects)From the introduction of the concept in the
Dennis & Van Horn paper, capabilities ideas spread steadily with
numerous projects started, and mind share growing as evidenced by
capabilities being the focus of articles by Denning and Linden in the
1976 Computing Surveys.

1975-1984: (18 projects) Numerous projects. In 1985, one could still
find capabilities being discussed in Operating Systems Review.

1985-1994: (7 projects) Of these seven, Mach and Emerald are probably
best seen as extensions of work from the previous decade. Mungi and
Grasshopper are part of the rich Australian tradition of which more
could be said. In the US, there was only Joule and EROS, which kept
the KeyKOS tradition alive, but this path didn't really start building
 momentum until after 1994. Of potential interest is the SMITE
project.I don't know much about it but the SMITE project at the Royal
Signals and Radar Establishment in England seems to have been an
attempt use a capability-based system for military (TCSEC-like)
security.

1995-2004: A revival of sorts seems to have occurred. Starting with
some isolated projects like W-7, J-Kernel and Client Utility, and
building on the ongoing momentum of the E and Eros projects. My list
of projects does not include much of the post 1996 activity, yet, so I
won't give a total count, but it would be back into double digits.

The year is meant to indicate when the project started based on the
best information I could find. Sometimes this information is good,
other times it is limited. For example, some dates reflect when the
authors of a paper state that the project started; if that info is not
available, I use the publication date of the first report. Although,
clearly the project must have started prior to this.

1959: Rice University Computer
1961: B5000 - Burroughs
1964: Dennis & Van Horn  - MIT
---------------------------------------------------
1966: PDP-1 Supervisor - MIT
1967: Magic Number Machine - University of Chicago
1968: CAL-TSS - Berkeley
1969: System 250 - Plessey Corporation
1969: BCC Model 1: Berkeley Computer Corporation
1970: Gendanken - Argonne National Laboratories/ Berkeley
1970: CAP - Cambridge University
1971: Future System Project - IBM
1971: Project SUE - University of Toronto
1971: Hydra - Carnegie Mellon
1972: RATS - Lawrence Livermore
1973: System/38 - IBM
1973: Actors - MIT
1973: PSOS - SRI
----------------------------------------------------
1975: StarOS - Carnegie Mellon
1975: GNOSIS/KeyKOS - Tymshare/Key Logic
1976: Monads - Monash University
1977: Demos - Los Alamos
1978: NLTSS - Lawrence Livermore
1979: Eden Project - University of Washington
1979: Chorus - INRIA/Chorus Systemes
1980: SWARD - IBM
1980: SODS/OS - University of Delaware
1980: PDP 11 operating system - University of Texas
1980: Path Pascal - NASA
1981: Amoeba - Free University Amsterdam
1981: Flex - Royal Signals and Radar Establishment (RSRE)
1981: Accent - Carnegie Mellon
1981: iAPX 432 - Intel
1982: Password-Capability System - Monash University
1982: Cambridge Distributed Computing System - Cambridge University
1984: SCAP - Cambridge University
-------------------------------------------------------------
1985: Mach - Carnegie Mellon
1985: Emerald - University of Washington
1988: SMITE - RSRE
1990: EROS - U Penn
1990: Joule - Los Altos
1992: Mungi - New South Wales
1994: Grasshopper - University of Sydney
-------------------------------------
1995: Client Utility - HP Labs
1995: Original-E - Electric Communities
1996: W7 - MIT
1996: Oviedo3 - Oviedo University (Spain)
1997: SLK/J-Kernel Cornel
1998: SpeedOS - University of Ulm
1999: E Language

Bill