While this is a departure from the UNIX model, it provides a more powerful experimental environment. More importantly, high level UNIX compatibility is still possible. While not a radical departure from traditional windowing systems, it utilises the shared address space of Angel to maximise performance for graphical and multimedia applications. A UNIX environment for Angel is seen as a necessary step for the system to be used in a more general context. Although never a primary design goal, the ability to support UNIX applications without modification provides a mechanism to reduce development time of the system.
Parallel machines offer improvements in performance, scalability and efficient fault tolerance.
There are few operating systems capable of supporting applications on these machines efficiently. Simulation work will examine the trade-offs in such systems. Resource management and adaptive service provision in distributed machines are complex problems, especially when realtime goals must be considered. Current solutions are either too centralised, hence unscalable and inflexible, or too restrictive on the applications. A list of papers relating to Angel is available.