Talking about the current state of the operating system: the unsettling application environment and the surging technological frenzy

Author | Dong Ziqiang, Product Director of PwC Basic Software

Review | Ling Min

This article is part of the "2021 InfoQ Annual Technical Inventory and Outlook" series.

1

The epochal significance of the operating system and the unsettling application environment

Since the birth of the first computer in 1946, mankind began to move towards the digital age, in 1956 the first generation of batch processing system - GM-NAA I/O appeared, today computers and operating systems have undergone more than fifty years of concomitant development, people began to become more and more accustomed to the rich and colorful experiences that computer technology brings to life, work, study and entertainment.

From smart watches to mobile phones, from tablets, laptops to desktop computers, and the large number of server devices that exist behind almost all of the applications that are now online, people frequently use the above applications every day to help them complete their daily lives and work tasks. As the underlying basic technology supporting the orderly operation of computers, the operating system has become the soul of a computer in the information age, and the soul is often the most difficult to touch.

"China's information industry lacks core and soul" - as early as 1999, Mr. Xu Guanhua, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and then minister of science and technology, pointed out this core problem. Today, more than 20 years later, in the face of the risk of core technology blockade, the core (chip) and soul (operating system) of China's information industry are undergoing drastic changes.

Although the operating system in the application scenario for the user's presence is not high, but it is an indispensable root technology, it is the operating system to make human-computer interaction efficiency and experience has been continuous progress and development, and even affect the development direction of computer technology, Internet technology.

Universal terminal environment

In the current application scenario, the universal terminal mainly includes personal computers, servers, tablets, and smart phones, with Windows, OS X, Linux, iOS, and Android as the main operating systems. In the era of mobile Internet, mobile operating systems such as Android and iOS have caught up with the market share of terminal operating systems such as personal computers and servers.

In the application environment of these terminal devices, the operating system due to its basic attributes, the change cycle is longer than the application on it, the technological development is slower, and the pursuit is more stable and secure to ensure that users can smoothly install and deploy various application software on it. The user's perception of the operating system is relatively low, the market is not sensitive to changes in the operating system field, and the main research and development investment direction of various operating system manufacturers is also quietly changing.

In December 2021, the market value once surpassed Apple, becoming the first Microsoft in market capitalization, in the 2021 Q4 financial report, server and cloud service revenue increased by 26%, of which Azure cloud service revenue increased by 50%, is expected to exceed its Office in 2022, becoming Microsoft's largest source of revenue. In terms of new technologies, Microsoft has always attached great importance to its MR product Hololens, and in the cloud service project, it is also planning to provide cloud Rigetti superconducting quantum computer services, and the traditional PC operating system has gradually withdrawn from Microsoft's first business front.

Apple's investment in OS X and iOS is currently unclear, but Apple has been committed to the exploration of new areas, apple class, Apple Car and Apple Watch and other new smart devices investment is huge. Although the operating system is still an important product of Apple, in terms of Apple's revenue model, the operating system cannot directly bring revenue to it, so new smart devices may be the direction that Apple pays more attention to.

The Android system has brought prosperity to the mobile Internet era, its open and free model allows more developers to invest in it, and major mobile phone manufacturers also rely on the Android ecosystem to build their own mobile devices (including tablets), but it is well known that Google has not relied on Android as a revenue point, and Google's search engine and advertising are still its main source of income. In terms of technology exploration, Google has been having a heavy research and development exploration in cloud computing and artificial intelligence, and has a leading global technical advantage in quantum computing and artificial intelligence.

In terms of Linux systems, as an open source operating system, its most well-known commercial company, RedHat, is almost a monopoly, and its main success lies in the business model that cannot be imitated. In the past decade, RedHat has developed from selling enterprise linux to covering storage, middleware, virtualization, cloud computing, etc., relying on processes like enterprise linux to achieve a "Red Hat" product array, RedHat is no longer a simple Linux operating system company.

In the upper community of Linux, the technical ecology of the Linux Kernel open source community is not optimistic. Linus Torvalds, the founder of the Linux Kernel, mentioned in a discussion about the future of Linux kernel maintenance that "it is difficult to find a new successor after their group of Linux kernel maintainers have aged, because the Linux kernel project is not so interesting to many young developers." "The Linux Foundation is also fully developing the Cloud Native Foundation (CNCF), which has brought great impetus and impact to the entire cloud computing ecosystem, and also indicates the development direction of the underlying technology in the cloud."

In 2021, PwC Basic Software also released three new products for the cloud: PwC Taiji Server Operating System, PwC Cloud Management Platform, and PwC Taiyi Intelligent O&M Platform. Support the development of cloud business in key industries in China, and build an automated and digital cloud base.

Smart device environment

In the direction of smart devices, the operating system still plays the most important role as a basic support. Smart devices mainly include smart wearable devices, smart home appliances and smart machines in the professional field, and currently mainly use Linux, Android and RTOS as the underlying operating system.

In the smart device environment, for the use of scenarios and hardware non-standardization, the operating system needs to be targeted to modify, tailor, the user's perception of the operating system in such an environment is even weaker. Experience perception is more of a dedicated application software, such as time, heart rate monitoring and GPS in smart watches, automatic pathfinding, remote control and air wall functions of sweeping robots. The professional field is also a customized application for specific scenarios, such as face recognition registration system, bank automatic card issuance system, etc.

Cloud computing environment

In the cloud computing environment, the operating system is mainly concentrated at the server level, and the current global server system support mainly relies on various distributions of Linux. On Amazon EC2, the world's largest market share of cloud computing services, Linux distributions cover 92% of compute instances, Windows Server accounts for only 8%, and the Linux operating system occupies 498 of the world's strongest 500 supercomputers, the other two are AIX running Unix.

In the internet era today, almost all applications and services have been connected to the cloud, people's demand for servers is gradually increasing, these servers and the information carried on them like air has been fully covered to every corner of the human world, and just like the air, end users on the server and the operating system above it is difficult to perceive, people talk more about the rate of network transmission, network service content.

In the past 20 years, with the development of application technology, in different application environments, the operating system as the underlying technology has become the basic software platform that people are accustomed to, so will the development of operating system technology stagnate due to the neglect of user perception?

The answer is no, although the operating system has gradually declined in the appearance of the surface layer, but the development of the underlying technology has never stopped, and it is still surging.

2

The upheaval of architecture and the transformation of operating systems in a surging technological frenzy

Technological changes in the field of chips

In a computer technology architecture, the operating system is placed on top of the underlying hardware layer with the chip as the core. In 2021, technology in the field of chips has undergone drastic changes, followed by changes in the demand for operating systems.

On November 11, 2020, Apple released the latest M1 chip, which is carried to multiple desktop platform products of Apple. The M1 chip is not a CPU in the traditional sense, but is actually a SoC chip (System on Chip), which is a chip-level highly integrated processor that can greatly reduce system power consumption and run speed at the chip level, which brings an unprecedented experience for Apple users.

Apple's M1 chip is an SoC, which can be seen in which a CPU (central processing unit) is also integrated

But to achieve such a level as Apple's M1 chip, the threshold is extremely high. First of all, Apple products have a complete ecosystem and supply chain, in the closed system under the accumulation of software and hardware technology and sufficient investment in research and development, of course, this is not Apple's original stunt, in fact, in the field of mobile terminals have long used such a technical model, such as smart phone chips.

Computer technology has always been a cyclical development model of continuous expansion of computing power compression integration expansion and re-compression integration, the world's first CPU covers an area of 170 square meters, weighs 30 tons, and calculates 5,000 times per second, while now an Apple M1 chip calculates up to 11 trillion times per second. In the process, the operating system has changed dramatically.

In the traditional CPU mode, the operating system is placed on the hardware system, and now in some application scenarios of the SoC chip, the operating system has even begun to integrate into the chip, which is another step further in the squeeze of computing power.

The improvement of basic hardware computing power and the sinking of operating system technology will appear, will there be a highly integrated high-computing computing architecture, or will a new operating system on top of the traditional operating system be born? It's all possible.

Under the highly integrated scenario, the integrated tailored operating system of computing power transmission in the chip that is only for real-time needs can greatly increase the computing power of the dedicated direction, such as AI computing power, database acceleration, etc., while the traditional operating system is still used in general application scenarios.

If the traditional operating system is combined with the development of chip technology and directly integrated in the underlying chip, the construction of the upper operating system may be more suitable for new interactive forms, such as artificial intelligence operating systems, virtual reality operating systems, etc., which are urgently needed in the current market environment.

If we directly conclude that traditional desktop and server processor technologies should be stagnant and not objective. The central processing unit (CPU) is still the leader of the current chip technology, in the traditional computer mode, the CPU production process, architecture design and hardware performance mining and other technical directions are still advancing, but its ecological model and Apple's implementation of SoC chip technology direction is very different, the traditional CPU mode is difficult to catch up quickly.

In recent years, NVIDIA's pre-acquisition of ARM, AMD's acquisition of Xilinx, and Intel's launch of oneAPI have all targeted the direction of heterogeneous computing. Because as mentioned above, a new round of computing power compression integration has begun, and the operating system will inevitably change in this process, but what the final form will be is still unclear.

Intel's oneAPI opens up interface schemes for heterogeneous computing

3

Technological changes in the field of terminals

We discussed the development and change of the underlying hardware technology, and is the terminal device layer also changing? At present, the main terminal devices on the market include traditional computers (desktops and servers), mobile devices (tablets and smartphones), smart devices (wearables, smart homes and special-purpose terminals).

Personally, I believe that the underlying architecture and technology of traditional computers in the desktop layer have not undergone substantial changes in the past 30 years, and they strictly abide by Feng. Neumann computing structure, only from the operation, storage, transmission performance continues to improve (of course, GPU technology may be a new change, but does not affect the core architecture), the operating system has not revolutionized innovation and change.

In 2021, after six years, Windows 11 was officially released, using a new interface design language, but the underlying interaction logic and functions have not changed dramatically, in fact, in the update process of Windows for many years, the core capabilities are compared with Windows 95 of that year, except for changes in the interface, there is no difference in essence. In the server command line application scenario, the essential changes of the Linux system are even less pitiful, more is the strengthening of hardware compatibility and inclusiveness, as well as the maintenance of hardware performance and stability.

In terms of mobile terminals, Android and iOS have been released for nearly 15 years, and there have been many changes in the operating system interface and self-contained applications, combined with smart phone devices to lead the world into the era of mobile Internet. However, the initial architecture is still continued in terms of underlying technology, Android is developed based on the Linux kernel, iOS is based on Unix, and at present, according to the version iteration of the two major mobile operating systems, it has gradually moved to the stage of stable maintenance.

Interesting is the change in terms of universal terminals. In 2021, major operating system companies are stepping up their exposure and disclosure of new terminal systems and products. Apple further identified the research and development plan of Apple Car and Apple Glass, and further disclosed the time to market, and in 2021, foreign media broke the news that Apple Car target was launched in 2025 and aimed at fully autonomous driving.

In the automotive industry, autonomous driving integrates artificial intelligence, data interaction, high-precision positioning, on-board terminals, multi-sensor fusion technology and other technologies, which puts forward higher requirements for traditional automotive chips and operating systems. From the perspective of operating system, the traditional classical control model is changing to a new control model of perception, integration, decision-making, control and execution, and the traditional automotive operating system has been unable to meet the needs. The evolution of the vehicle control operating system to the intelligent driving operating system, and the evolution of the vehicle operating system to the intelligent cockpit operating system has become an inevitable trend.

Microsoft, which is also a major operating system manufacturer, in addition to vigorously developing cloud service business, has not stagnated in the research and development of new terminals, its mixed reality glasses HoloLens has developed to the second generation, and will also jointly develop AR glasses projects with Samsung in the future, the current HoloLens has been in the field of scientific research, medical and education, which also indicates that the operating system company is more optimistic about the future of the new interactive operating system VR (virtual reality), AR (augmented reality) or Direction of MR (Mixed Reality).

What have changed in terms of servers?

In the past, we had a single server to develop the Internet applications and services we needed, and we knew exactly where that server was stored. With the evolution of technology, virtual server instances have become a commonly used computing unit for network application developers, and a single server can no longer meet the current application environment, which means that people no longer use a server (whether virtual or physical) to complete the development and deployment of Internet application services, but use distributed clusters to uniformly provision and use, so that the operating system on each server (most of the time is a Linux system) becomes minimal. Thousands of application components and middleware have become close partners of Internet developers, which is the most common server application scenario today.

In such a scenario, the platform system for the management, provisioning, orchestration and monitoring system integration of cluster resources is more like an operating system for the entire data center, which can also be called "cloud computing operating system", and people need a powerful cloud computing operating system to solve the management and use of hundreds of servers. So, will there be a "cloud operating system" in the direction of server terminals that treats the data center as a whole computer?

Cloud-native technologies may have the answer.

Cloud-native technology is a way to build and run applications, it does not represent a certain technology or system, but under this concept, it is very easy to appear new operating systems, through the cloud-native concept of DevOps, CI/CD, Serverless and Container and other technologies to achieve a set of platform systems from development, deployment, maintenance to use in the cloud, which is very similar to our early development work mode on a computer. In the process, container orchestration systems such as Kubernetes and Rancher have grown rapidly, and perhaps we will soon see operating systems for the entire cloud computing center.

Technological changes in the domestic environment

We have a macroscopic overview of the changes brought about by the changes in the operating system due to the changes in chips and terminals. In 2021, the domestic environment has also made good progress, in mid-November, the two major operating system open source communities in which Puhua Basic Software participated in Euler and Dragon Lizard have announced their official donations to the Open Atom Open Source Foundation, indicating that the cohesion of the domestic operating system camp has been further strengthened, and the ecological industry will also usher in joint development.

The development of operating system is a high-input and low-output business, requiring years of accumulation and continuous investment, which is the pressure that any commercial organization can not bear, in these organizations and enterprises that cling to the underlying technology, Kirin Software, Puhua Basic Software and other operating system distribution companies have insisted on more than ten years of time, and strive to break through in the direction they are good at. PwC continues to develop server operating systems based on the mainstream CPU architecture in China, which can already support most cloud service scenarios. When these enterprises have invested in the open source community and jointly built domestic operating system products, it is believed that in the near future, China's Linux distribution operating system will also be recognized in the global field, and it can also better support the development of domestic information technology and complete the underlying construction of the digital economy.

4

The Eve of the Future: From blockchain to metaversity, from the digital age to cyberpunk

What the future looks like

In 2021, Facebook officially changed its name to Meta, pointing to the concept of "metacosm" and planning to build a virtual world that is closely related to reality. Subsequently, the concept of the "metaverse" became popular around the world.

Technology has never been achieved overnight, the development of technology has always had its inevitability and accidental characteristics, it sounds like it is contradictory, but we add a time dimension can easily look at this problem, in the long-term route, Internet information technology is indeed constantly simulating the construction of 1:1 the real world, we hope that all physical operations tend to digitize, so as to achieve automation to improve production efficiency and reduce production costs, which is almost beyond doubt.

In the short-term development, we can not judge which part of the envisioned target scene is the first to be realized to lead people further into the future, perhaps the touch screen mobile phone allows everyone to connect to the network and process information anytime and anywhere, or the robot automatically completes the process operation according to people's program design, which is an indispensable part of the ultimate "metaverse" world.

What role will the operating system play in such a scenario? If the entire "metaverse" is an operating system, perhaps its data is decentralized, its computing power is blockchain-based, and the rendering of each flower and plant comes from the devices connected to the "metaverse" or the people themselves.

Technologies related to future scenarios

We still have some way to go to reach the ultimate "metaverse" era envisioned in the future, and in the process, what technologies or operating systems related to future scenarios will emerge?

Boldly predict that in the future, the unified resource management system (cloud computing center operating system) in the cloud will become a server-side solution. The new operating system under the terminal MR technology will also replace the personal computer and smartphone operating systems, which of course needs to be combined with the new MR device. In some dedicated scenarios, AI-driven operating systems will gradually replace embedded real-time operating systems.

In these directions, chip technology, AR/VR/MR technology, cloud computing/cloud-native related technologies, and AI technologies will usher in huge demand, and the development of these technologies may bring about the emergence of new operating systems.

5

Write at the end: A new journey for operating systems from the cloud to the end

The development of operating systems for more than decades is a very grand topic in itself, and the technological innovation of operating systems is often accompanied by new technological eras. We do not intend to describe a specific technology, because it really does not represent the entire field of operating system technology, and it is always exciting to exchange the development and possibilities of operating system development in the past and next few years from a macro perspective, and such review and enjoyment is always exciting for participants in the operating system field.

About the Author:

Dong Ziqiang, now working at PwC Basic Software, is in charge of the company's overall product planning and design, focusing on the technical research and product analysis of cloud operating systems and domestic mainstream chips. He has served as a product director and product consultant of many large Internet / technology companies, and published theme reports such as "Cloud Native Digital Infrastructure Support Scheme" and "Puhua's Cloud Native Construction Road". Founded in 2008, Puhua Basic Software has been committed to the research and development of the underlying technology of domestic digital construction, the development of operating systems and related basic software from the cloud to the end, including general desktop / server operating systems, cloud computing resource management platforms and real-time embedded operating systems in the automotive field.