The Kaya OS project and the μMPS Hardware Simulator

Ideally, the most meaningful learning experience for students in an undergraduate OS course would be to develop fully-functional OS’s on their own. This can be accomplished using μMPS, a hardware simulator for a pedagogically undergraduate-appropriate hardware architecture, along with Kaya, a specification for a multi-layer OS supporting multiprocessing, VM, thread synchronization, external devices (disks, terminals, tape, printers, and network interfaces) and a file system. Traditional OS projects like Nachos[3] or OS/161[9] provide students with a significant starting code base. Students then modify existing operating system modules or add new ones. With μMPS/Kaya students undergo an innovative and pedagogically different experience of starting only with a hardware simulator (i.e. no initial OS code base for students to build on/replace) and ending with a completely student written OS capable of running student written C programs.