Specialization Classes: An Object Framework for Specialization

Specialization is a growing area of interest in the operating systems community. OS components specialized to some particular circumstance can o er enhanced performance, functionality, or both. Complimentary partial evaluation techniques for automatically specializing programs are also reaching maturity. However, the problem of managing specialization remains: how to specify a specialization, when to apply it, and when to remove it. This problem is particularly important for long-running programs such as operating systems, where specializations are likely to be temporary. This paper presents an object-oriented framework for specifying specializations in long-running programs such as operating systems. This model is based on the following concepts: