[ih] What research capability-based OS was on the ARPAnet?

[Dave Taht]

On Tue, Dec 6, 2022 at 6:24 AM Clem Cole via Internet-history
<internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>
> On Tue, Dec 6, 2022 at 3:52 AM John Gilmore via Internet-history <
> internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>
> >
> > For a time, I ran across an interesting research machine that was based
> > on "capabilities".  It was well documented for its time, and I learned
> > about it by using it just to explore, but I never programmed for it.  By
> > now I've forgotten its name and who its inventor was.  Do any Internet
> > historians remember it?
>
>
> There were a couple, but did you mean CMU's C.mmp - which ran Hydra, which
> was capabilities based and was on the Internet as CMU-D or CMU-Hydra? The
> system influenced the Intel 432 BTW, which was also based on capabilities.
>   Bill Wulf and his co-authors Roy Levin and Sam Harbison have a book about
> it: "HYDRA/C.mmp: An Experimental Computer System" (ISBN 0-07-072120-3).
> After all their work on building Cdot and Hydra, the book is the report.
> It has my favorite dedication of any book in the research world, which
> says:  "To builders and programs of real programming systems."
>
> The follow-on for Hydra was StarOS for CM*, which was also
> capability based, but I don't think it was ever directly connected to CMU's
> IMP, only on the LAN, so it's unlikely you would have had access to it.
>  FWIW:  Henry Levy has a book from Digital Press called '*Capability-Based
> Computer Systems*' (ISBN 978-148-3101064), which has a pretty good survey
> of most of them, so if Cdot/Hydra was not it, there is a good chance Henry
> describes the system in his book, which I think is available via google
> books. [I have printed copies of both]

Moving forward to modern day, cambridge has shipped working hardware
for their capability based architecture
and ported a lot of code to it:
https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/research/security/ctsrd/cheri/

(I'm very encouraged). Also in looking for "cambridge capabilities",
research there goes back to the 70s also.

Also millcomputer's attempt at an implementation was fascinating:

https://millcomputing.com/docs/security/

(ivan's a trip and goes back to algop 68)


>
> Clem
> ᐧ
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