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Alexia Massalin’s 1992 PhD thesis describing the Synthesis Operating System.

  http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.29.4871&rep=rep1&type=pdf
Here's Valerie Aurora’s description of Synthesis:

... a completely lock-free operating system optimized using run-time code generation, written from scratch in assembly running on a homemade two-CPU SMP with a two-word compare-and-swap instruction — you know, nothing fancy.

Which (necessarily) undersells by a very large margin just how impressive, innovative, and interesting this thesis is.

If you’re interested in operating systems, or compilers, or concurrency, or data structures, or real-time programming, or benchmarking, or optimization, you should read this thesis. Twenty-five years after it was published, it still provides a wealth of general inspiration and specific food for thought. It’s also clearly and elegantly written. And, as a final bonus, it’s a snapshot from an era in which Sony made workstations and shipped its own, proprietary, version of Unix. Good times.



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