Dynamic Reconfiguration in a Modular Computer System.

The thesis presents an orderly design approach for dynamically changing the configuration of constituent physical units in a modular computer system. Dynamic reconfiguration contributes to high system availability by allowing preventive maintenance, development of new operating systems, and changes in system capacity on a noninterference basis. The design presented includes the operating system primitives and hardware architecture for adding and removing any primary or secondary storage module and associated processing modules while the system is running. Reconfiguration is externally initiated by a simple request from a human operator and is accomplished automatically without disruption to users of the system. This design allows the modules in an installation to be partitioned into separate noninterfering systems. The viability of the design approach has been demonstrated by employing it for a practical implementation of processor and primary memory dynamic reconfiguration in the Multics system at M.I.T. Author