
.sh 1 "Summary"
.lp
KSOS-32 is now at a critical turning point in its development. It is
running on a VAX-11/780 and could run on any processor in the VAX
architecture family with a development effort of less than 6
man-months. KSOS-32 is a very secure system and has the potential to
reach any rating from the Trusted Computer System Evaluation Criteria
[TCSEC], although B3 would be the best target rating. Estimates of the
effort required to reach any rating in the TCSEC have been identified.
KSOS-32 is very UNIX-like and this would allow it to support a secure
UNIX environment for application programs. The performance of KSOS-32
is far from its potential, primarily because at no point in its
history has the project ever been funded to investigate performance
issues or tune the system.
.lp
For all of these reasons, KSOS-32 is at a point that it could become a
very cost-effective platform to support multi-level secure
applications on a hardware base that spans a tremendous performance
range (from the microVAX processors up to any of the large VAX
uniprocessors).
.lp
It is intersting to note that none of KSOS-32 current performance
deficiencies arise as a result of the architecture or the security
features of the system. They are all due to incomplete implementation
or lack of tuning. This should not be surprising, as KSOS-11 was
originally intended as a production prototype for secure systems and
KSOS-32 has never been tuned. 
.lp
Instead of focusing on KSOS-32's existing performance, we should focus
on KSOS-32's potential performance. Berkely's 4.2 BSD UNIX is a fairly
well-tuned and mature product, and it should be noted that KSOS-32's
performance and implementation is very similar to that of the initial
release of BSD UNIX (3 BSD). KSOS-32 development is now at almost
exactly the same place Berkely UNIX was in 1979. KSOS-32 has the same
potential for performance, given a modest investment in time and
money.
