I had lunch (Thai, if it matters) today with my friend Linda Campbell, who runs the strategic alliances group at QNX Software Systems. Over the lunch, I asked if she had heard about the Microsoft Research Group’s experimental OS called Singularity. Like QNX Neutrino, Singularity is also a micro-kernal based system.
We speculated that perhaps the Microsoft Research team was paying homage to QNX because the terms singularity and neutrino are both from the world of physics, both terms signify infinitesimal objects, and both operating systems are micro-kernal architectures. However, it’s worth noting that a neutrino is infinitesimal and massless, while a singularity is infinitesimal with infinite mass. Somehow that seems fitting. A quick read of the whitepapers on the Singularity website revealed that, while not infinitely massive, the Singularity kernal is quite a bit larger than Neutrino.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming…
Alec Saunders is the Vice President of Developer Relations for BlackBerry make Research in Motion. This is his personal blog, with his personal viewpoints. Prior to this Alec was the CEO and co-founder of Calliflower — the easiest way to hold a meeting, online, on a conference call, or on the go. A double-decade veteran of product management and marketing, he spent nine years at Microsoft where he helped launch Windows 95, the first two versions of Internet Explorer, the Universal Plug and Play initiative, the push into home markets, opt-in email marketing and what might well go down in history as the very first direct email list ever.
