Since the birth of the first computer in 1946, humanity has embarked on the digital age. The first generation of batch processing systems, GM-NAA I/O, appeared in 1956. Today, computers and operating systems have undergone more than fifty years of co-development, and people have become increasingly accustomed to the rich experiences provided by computer technology in life, work, learning, and entertainment.
From smartwatches to smartphones, from tablets and laptops to desktop computers, and now with a plethora of servers supporting almost all online application software, people frequently use these applications to assist with daily life and work tasks. The operating system, as the underlying foundational technology supporting the orderly operation of computers, has become the soul of a computer in the information age, and the soul is often the hardest to touch.
“China’s information industry lacks chips 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 issue. More than twenty years later, in the face of risks related to core technology blockades, the soul (operating system) and chips of China’s information industry are undergoing dramatic changes.
Although the presence of the operating system in application scenarios is not highly perceived by users, it is an essential root technology. It is the operating system that has continuously improved the efficiency and experience of human-computer interaction, even influencing the development direction of computer and internet technologies.
In the current application scenario, general terminals mainly include personal computers, servers, tablets, and smartphones, with Windows, OS X, Linux, iOS, and Android as the main operating systems. In the mobile internet era, mobile operating systems like Android and iOS have surpassed personal computers and servers in market share.
In the application environments of these terminal devices, due to its foundational properties, the operating system undergoes a longer transformation cycle compared to the applications above it, with slower technological development. It pursues stability and security more, ensuring that users can smoothly install and deploy various application software. Users have a relatively low perception of operating systems, and the market is not sensitive to changes in the operating system field, while the main R&D investment directions of various operating system vendors are quietly changing.
In December 2021, Microsoft, with a market value that once surpassed Apple, became the most valuable company. In its Q4 2021 financial report, revenue from servers and cloud services grew by 26%, with Azure cloud service revenue increasing by 50%, expected to surpass Office revenue in 2022, becoming Microsoft’s largest source of income. In terms of new technologies, Microsoft has placed great importance on its MR product Hololens, and is planning to offer cloud-based Rigetti superconducting quantum computing services under its cloud service projects, indicating that traditional PC operating systems are gradually retreating from Microsoft’s primary business line.
Apple’s investment in OS X and iOS is currently unclear, but the company has always been committed to exploring new fields, with significant R&D investments in new smart devices such as Apple Class, Apple Car, and Apple Watch. Although the operating system remains an important product for Apple, given its revenue model, it does not directly generate income, so new smart devices may be the focus of Apple’s attention.
The Android system has brought prosperity to the mobile internet era, with its open and free model attracting more developers, and major smartphone manufacturers relying on the Android ecosystem to build their mobile devices (including tablets). However, it is well-known that Google does not rely on Android as a revenue point; its search engine and advertising remain its main sources of income. In terms of technological exploration, Google has heavily invested in cloud computing and artificial intelligence, maintaining a global technological advantage in quantum computing and AI.
As an open-source operating system, Linux’s most well-known commercial company, RedHat, has almost monopolized the market, with its main success point being its unreplicable business model. Over the past decade, RedHat has evolved from selling enterprise Linux to encompassing storage, middleware, virtualization, and cloud computing fields, relying on processes similar to that of enterprise Linux to achieve a “RedHat” product array, and RedHat is no longer a mere Linux operating system company.
In the upper layers of the Linux community, the technical ecology of the Linux Kernel open-source community is also not optimistic. Linus Torvalds, the founder of the Linux Kernel, once mentioned in a discussion about the future of Linux kernel maintenance that “after this batch of Linux kernel maintainers ages, it will be difficult to find new successors, because for many young developers, the Linux kernel project is not that interesting.” The Linux Foundation is also fully developing the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), which brings significant advancement and influence to the entire cloud computing ecology, signaling the development direction of underlying technologies in the cloud.
In 2021, Puhua Basic Software also launched three new products aimed at the cloud: Puhua Taiji Server Operating System, Puhua Taichu Cloud Management Platform, and Puhua Taiyi Intelligent Operation and Maintenance Platform. These support the development of cloud business in key domestic industries, building an automated and digital cloud foundation.
In the field of smart devices, the operating system still plays the most important foundational support role. Smart devices mainly include smart wearable devices, smart home appliances, and specialized smart equipment, currently primarily using Linux, Android, and RTOS as underlying operating systems.
In the smart device environment, due to the non-standardization of usage scenarios and hardware, the operating system needs to be specifically modified and tailored. Users have a weaker perception of operating systems in such environments. The experiential perception is more about dedicated application software, such as time, heart rate monitoring, and GPS in smartwatches, or the automatic navigation, remote control, and air wall functions of robotic vacuum cleaners. In specialized fields, there are also customized applications for specific scenarios, such as facial recognition registration systems and automatic card issuance systems in banks.
In the cloud computing environment, operating systems are mainly concentrated at the server level, and currently, the global server system support primarily relies on various distributions of Linux. On the world’s largest cloud computing service market share leader, Amazon EC2, various Linux distributions cover 92% of computing instances, while Windows Server accounts for only 8%. In the list of the world’s top 500 supercomputers, Linux operating systems occupy 498 units, with the other two running Unix’s AIX.
In today’s network era, almost all applications and services are connected to the cloud, and the demand for servers is gradually increasing. These servers and the information they carry are like air, fully covering every corner of the human world. Just like air, end-users find it difficult to perceive the servers and the operating systems above them, as people talk more about network transmission rates and the content of network services.
Over the past 20 years, with the development of application technologies, operating systems as underlying technologies have become an ordinary foundational software platform in different application environments. So, will the development of operating system technology stagnate due to users’ neglect of perception?
The answer is no. Although the operating system’s surface presence is gradually declining, the development of underlying technologies has never stopped and is still surging.
In the architecture of computer technology, the operating system is placed above the foundational hardware layer centered on chips. In 2021, significant changes occurred in the chip field, leading to changes in the demand for operating systems.
On November 11, 2020, Apple released its latest M1 chip, which was installed in several of Apple’s desktop platform products. The M1 chip is not a traditional CPU but rather a SoC (System on Chip), a highly integrated processor that significantly reduces system power consumption and improves running speed, providing Apple users with an unprecedented experience.
The Apple M1 chip is a SoC, which integrates a CPU (Central Processing Unit).
However, achieving the level of the Apple M1 chip has a high threshold. First, Apple products have a complete ecosystem and supply chain, with a wealth of technological accumulation in a closed system and ample R&D investment. This is not a unique skill of Apple; in fact, such a technological model has long been used in the mobile terminal field, such as in smartphone chips.
Computer technology has always followed a cyclical development model of expanding → compressing → integrating → expanding → compressing → integrating. The world’s first CPU occupied 170 square meters, weighed 30 tons, and performed 5,000 calculations per second, while now an Apple M1 chip can perform up to 11 trillion calculations per second. During this process, the operating system has undergone tremendous changes.
Under the traditional CPU model, the operating system is placed above the hardware. However, in some application scenarios of SoC chips, the operating system has even begun to be integrated into the chip, further squeezing computing power.
With the improvement of foundational hardware computing power and the sinking of operating system technology, will a highly integrated high-performance computing architecture emerge, or will new operating systems be born on top of traditional operating systems? Both are possible.
In a highly integrated scenario, operating systems tailored for real-time computing power transmission integrated within chips can significantly enhance computing capabilities for specific directions, such as AI computing and database acceleration, while still using traditional operating systems in general application scenarios.
If we combine traditional operating systems with chip technology development, directly integrating them into the foundational chip, the construction of upper-layer operating systems may become more aligned with new interaction forms, such as artificial intelligence operating systems and virtual reality operating systems, which are urgently needed in the current market environment.
It would also be unreasonable to assert that traditional desktop and server processor technology should stagnate. The central processing unit (CPU) remains the leader in current chip technology, and in the traditional computer model, the manufacturing process, architectural design, and performance exploration of CPUs are still being advanced. However, the ecological model differs greatly from Apple’s SoC chip technology direction, making it difficult for traditional CPU models to catch up quickly.
In recent years, NVIDIA’s planned acquisition of ARM, AMD’s acquisition of Xilinx, and Intel’s launch of oneAPI all target heterogeneous computing. As mentioned earlier, a new round of computing power compression and integration has begun, and operating systems will inevitably change in this process, but what the final form will be is still unclear.
Intel’s oneAPI opens up heterogeneous computing interface solutions.
We have explored changes in foundational hardware technology, but are changes also occurring at the terminal device level? Currently, the main terminal devices on the market include traditional computers (desktops and servers), mobile devices (tablets and smartphones), and smart devices (wearable devices, smart homes, and specialized terminals).
In my opinion, the foundational architecture and technology of traditional computers at the desktop level have not undergone substantial changes in nearly 30 years, strictly adhering to the von Neumann computing architecture, merely enhancing performance in terms of computation, storage, and transmission (of course, GPU technology may be a new change, but it does not affect the core architecture). The operating system has not seen revolutionary innovation or change.
In 2021, after six years, Windows 11 was officially released, adopting a brand-new interface design language, but the underlying interaction logic and functions have not undergone significant changes. In fact, over many years of updates, the core capabilities of Windows have not differed from those of Windows 95, aside from interface changes. In the command-line application scenarios on servers, the essential changes in the Linux system are even more minimal, focusing more on enhancing compatibility and inclusiveness with hardware and maintaining hardware performance and stability.
On the mobile side, Android and iOS have undergone many changes in interface and built-in applications since their release nearly 15 years ago, leading the world into the mobile internet era. However, in terms of underlying technology, they still follow the initial architecture; Android is developed based on the Linux kernel, and iOS is based on Unix. Currently, based on the version iterations of these two major mobile operating systems, they are gradually moving towards a stage of stable maintenance.
Interestingly, changes in general terminals have become more apparent. In 2021, major operating system companies have been strengthening the exposure and disclosure of new terminal systems and products. Apple has further confirmed its R&D plans for Apple Car and Apple Glass, with further revelations about their release dates. Reports suggest that Apple Car aims to launch in 2025, targeting full autonomous driving.
In the automotive industry, autonomous driving integrates multiple technologies, including artificial intelligence, data interaction, high-precision positioning, onboard terminals, and multi-sensor fusion technology, which places higher demands on traditional automotive chips and operating systems. From the perspective of operating systems, the traditional classic control model is transitioning to a new control model of perception, fusion, decision-making, control, and execution. The evolution of traditional automotive operating systems into intelligent driving operating systems and smart cabin operating systems has become an inevitable trend.
As another major operating system company, Microsoft has not stagnated in the development of new terminal technologies while vigorously developing cloud services. Its mixed reality glasses, HoloLens, have reached the second generation and will collaborate with Samsung to develop AR glasses. The current HoloLens has applications in research, medical, and educational fields, indicating that operating system companies are optimistic about the future direction of new interactive operating systems, whether in VR (virtual reality), AR (augmented reality), or MR (mixed reality).
What changes have occurred in the operating systems for servers?
In the past, having a single server was sufficient to develop the required internet applications and services, and we knew the physical location of that server. As technology has evolved, virtual server instances have become common computing units for network application developers. A single server can no longer meet the current application environment, meaning that people no longer use a single server (whether virtual or physical) to develop and deploy internet application services, but rather use distributed clusters for unified allocation. In this scenario, the operating systems on each server (most often Linux systems) become negligible, while thousands of application components and middleware become close partners for internet developers. This is the most common server application scenario today.
In such scenarios, platforms for managing, allocating, orchestrating, and monitoring cluster resources resemble operating systems for entire data centers, which can be termed “cloud computing operating systems.” People need powerful cloud computing operating systems to address the management and usage issues of hundreds or thousands of servers. So, will a “cloud computing operating system” emerge that views the data center as a single computer in the server terminal direction?
Cloud-native technologies may provide the answer.
Cloud-native technology is a method of building and running applications. It does not represent a specific technology or system, but under this concept, new operating systems can easily emerge. Through technologies such as DevOps, CI/CD, Serverless, and Containers in the cloud-native concept, a platform system from development, deployment, maintenance to usage can be realized entirely in the cloud, which resembles the early development work mode on a single computer. During these processes, container orchestration systems like Kubernetes and Rancher are developing rapidly, and we may soon see operating systems targeting entire cloud computing centers.
Technological Changes in the Domestic Environment
We have macroscopically overviewed the changes in operating systems due to chips and terminals. In November 2021, the domestic environment also made good progress. In mid-November, the open-source communities of Euler and Longxin, in which Puhua Basic Software participated, announced their formal donation to the Open Atom Open Source Foundation, indicating that the cohesion of the domestic operating system camp has further strengthened, and the ecological industry is set to welcome collaborative development.
Developing operating systems is a high-investment, low-output endeavor that requires years of accumulation and continuous investment. This is a pressure that no commercial organization can bear. Among those organizations and enterprises dedicated to foundational technologies, operating system distribution companies like Kylin Software and Puhua Basic Software have persevered for over a decade, striving to make breakthroughs in their respective fields. Puhua continues to develop server operating systems based on mainstream domestic CPU architectures, which can now support most cloud service scenarios. As these companies invest in open-source communities to collectively build domestic operating system products, it is believed that in the near future, China’s Linux distribution operating systems will gain global recognition and better support the development of domestic information technology, completing the foundational construction of the digital economy.
In 2021, Facebook officially rebranded itself as Meta, directly pointing to the concept of the “metaverse” and planning to build a virtual world closely linked to reality. Subsequently, the concept of the “metaverse” has gained widespread attention globally.
Technology has never developed overnight; it always possesses characteristics of necessity and randomness. This may sound contradictory, but by adding a time dimension, we can easily view this issue. Over the long term, internet information technology is indeed continuously simulating and constructing a 1:1 reality. We hope all physical operations trend towards digitization, thereby achieving automation to improve production efficiency and reduce production costs, which is almost indisputable.
In the short-term development, we cannot determine which part of the envisioned target scene will be realized first to lead people further into the future. Perhaps it is touchscreen phones that allow everyone to connect to the internet and process information anytime, anywhere, or perhaps robots that automatically complete procedural operations according to human-designed programs. All these are essential parts of the ultimate “metaverse” world.
In such a scenario, what role will the operating system play? If the entire “metaverse” is an operating system, perhaps its data is decentralized, and its computing power follows a blockchain model, with every flower and grass rendered coming from devices connected to the “metaverse” or people themselves.
We still have a way to go to reach the ultimate “metaverse” era. During this process, what technologies or operating systems related to future scenarios will emerge?
Boldly predicting, the unified resource management system in the cloud (cloud computing center operating system) will become a solution for the server side. Meanwhile, under the new MR technology, new operating systems will replace personal computer and smartphone operating systems, which will require the integration of entirely new MR devices. In some specialized 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 technology will see enormous demand, and the development of these technologies may bring about the emergence of new operating systems.
The development of operating systems over the decades is a grand topic in itself. The technological innovation of operating systems often accompanies the arrival of new technological eras. We do not intend to describe a specific technology, as it indeed cannot represent the entire field of operating system technology. From a macro perspective, discussing the changes and possibilities of operating system development from the past to the future few years is always exciting for participants in the field of operating systems.
Author Introduction:
Dong Ziqiang currently works at Puhua Basic Software, overseeing the company’s overall product planning and design, focusing on the technical research and product analysis of cloud operating systems and mainstream domestic chips. He has served as product director and consultant for several large internet/technology companies and has published themed reports such as “Cloud Native Digital Infrastructure Support Solutions” and “Puhua’s Path to Cloud Native Construction.” Puhua Basic Software was established in 2008 and has been dedicated to the research and development of foundational technologies for domestic digital construction, developing operating systems and related foundational software from cloud to edge, including general desktop/server operating systems, cloud computing resource management platforms, and real-time embedded operating systems in the automotive field.