In the current tech paradigm, databases run on top of operating systems. But what if that stack was inverted, with an operating system running on top

Stonebraker Seeks to Invert the Computing Paradigm with DBOS

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2024-08-31 05:00:07

In the current tech paradigm, databases run on top of operating systems. But what if that stack was inverted, with an operating system running on top of the database? That’s the idea behind database guru Mike Stonebraker’s new startup DBOS, or Database-Oriented Operating System, which launched its commercial service on AWS today as well as an $8.5 million round of funding.

Stonebraker–who led the teams that created several databases (Ingres, Postgres, Vertica, VoltDB, SciDB) over the years and also won a Turing Award for his work–is known for out-of-the-box thinking and having a little bit of a contrarian streak. For instance, when most of the computing world was singing the praises of Hadoop back in 2014, he was pointing out its flaws five years before the big yellow elephant floundered and fell.

But running an operating system inside of a database? OSes have always been the software abstraction sitting closest to the bare metal. They have been relied on to control everything in the computer. Why on Earth would Stonebraker want to flip it around and put the database in charge of the hardware, and turn the operating system into just another service offered by the database?