With current operating systems, as the number of cores increases performance decreases. Microsoft Research has just announced an experimental OS, called Barrelfish, that they're developing in conjunction with ETH Zurich, in the hopes that they'll learn how to buck that trend -- both with current and future hardware. Building upon lessons learned with projects including Midori and Singularity, Barrelfish eschews share memory schemes in favor of message passing and a kind of database that shuttles information between cores. Heady stuff, for sure -- but just the kind of thing that sets off our Geek Alarms. If you can't wait to check this one out for yourself, hit the read link for the first release snapshot
