Forget about Windows XP SP3, Windows Vista SP1 and even Windows 7. If you think that Microsoft is just building Windows platforms, you are mistaken. The fact of the matter is that the Redmond company is also hard at work putting together a new operating system dubbed Singularity. First of all, Singularity is a Microsoft Research project designed to reinvent dependable system design.

Microsoft research has been building Singularity since 2003, and the company defines the new platform as both an innovative system-architecture and operating system. Singularity is the brainchild of Galen Hunt, a principal researcher and manager of Microsoft Research Redmond's Operating Systems Group, and Jim Larus, a research-area manager in the Software Improvement Group. And as of March 4, 2008, Microsoft has considered that Singularity reached a level of stability and functionality for the operating system to be shared.

"Our goal was to make Singularity small enough, simple enough, and well-designed enough that you can try out radical new ideas quickly," Hunt stated. "Our thinking is that a researcher with a great new idea for improving operating systems could get from idea to published paper in under a year using Singularity."

Microsoft Singularity is now available for download for free via CodePlex for academic and non-commercial use. But it is important to highlight, at this point, the fact that Singularity is a standalone and independent operating system from Windows. In fact, Singularity and Windows have absolutely nothing in common with one another. Singularity is not in any way connected not only with Windows, but also with Mac OS X, Linux or their common source Multics. Singularity is instead written almost entirely in an extension of C#.

"We asked ourselves: If we were going to start over, how could we make systems more reliable and robust?" Larus added. "We weren't under the illusion that we'd make them perfect, but we wanted them to behave more predictably and remain operating longer, and we wanted people to experience fewer interruptions when using them."