Source : WordNet®

Darwin
     n 1: English natural scientist who formulated a theory of
          evolution by natural selection (1809-1882) [syn: {Charles
          Darwin}, {Charles Robert Darwin}]
     2: provincial capital of the Northern Territory of Australia

Source : Free On-Line Dictionary of Computing

Darwin
     
        1.  An {operating system} based on the
        {FreeBSD} version of {Unix}, running on top of a {microkernel}
        ({Mach} 3.0 with darwin 1.02) that offers advanced networking,
        services such as the {Apache} {web server}, and support for
        both {Macintosh} and Unix {file systems}.  Darwin was
        originally released in March 1999.  It currently runs on
        {PowerPC} based Macintosh computers, and, in October 2000, was
        being ported to {Intel} processor-based computers and
        compatible systems by the Darwin community.
     
        2.  A general purpose structuring tool of
        use in building complex {distributed systems} from diverse
        components and diverse component interaction mechanisms.
        Darwin is being developed by the Distributed Software
        Engineering Section of the Department of Computing at
        {Imperial College}.  It is in essence a {declarative} binding
        language which can be used to define hierarchic compositions
        of interconnected components.  Distribution is dealt with
        orthogonally to system structuring.  The language allows the
        specification of both static structures and dynamic structures
        which evolve during execution.  The central abstractions
        managed by Darwin are components and services.  Bindings are
        formed by manipulating references to services.
     
        The {operational semantics} of Darwin is described in terms of
        the {Pi-calculus}, {Milner}'s calculus of mobile processes.
        The correspondence between the treatment of names in the
        Pi-calculus and the management of service references in Darwin
        leads to an elegant and concise Pi-calculus model of Darwin's
        {operational semantics}.  The model has proved useful in
        arguing the correctness of Darwin implementations and in
        designing extensions to Darwin and reasoning about their
        behaviour.
     
        {Distributed Software Engineering Section
        (http://www-dse.doc.ic.ac.uk/)}.  {Darwin publications
        (http://scorch.doc.ic.ac.uk/dse-papers/darwin/)}.
     
        E-mail: Jeff Magee , Naranker Dulay
        .
     
        3. {Core War}.
     
        (2003-08-08)