The goal of this chapter is to focus on writing a distributed guest OS-like system over the cluster of multiple BEAM nodes, which is a well-known Erlang virtual machine infrastructure. It is mostly interesting for company-centric services work in Intranet over a large amount of more or less legacy user computers, which are mostly used as terminals and type machines and have a lot of unused computation and storage power. This sample is a try to utilize this hidden resource avoiding the disadvantages (**)* via using the magic of the Erlang language runtime system.
*(**) such as unpredictable node shutdowns and downtime, unstable network, etc.
Another goal is the showing of language-centric OS design, which a bit resembles old-style BASIC-firmwared home computers, interactive Smalltalk systems, etc. These systems have a big linkage with programming language core embedded into the OS interface, which has some interests for advanced users, and which is totally lacking in most modern OSes.
Implementing Languages on the BEAM - Robert Virding - London Erlang User Group
Hitchhiker's guide to the Erlang VM
Secrets of the Erlang Beam compiler - Richard Carlsson
The handiest format for low-level programming for the BEAM is the Erlang Core. It is a special low-level dialect cleared from all syntax sugar, which stays the last human-readable format before the bytecode level.
A Gentle Introduction to Core Erlang: Part 1
A Gentle Introduction to Core Erlang: Part 2
The Core of Erlang | 8th Light
Richard Carlsson An introduction to Core Erlang
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download;jsessionid=73993F4B68836CD1EF093D958523F16A?doi=10.1.1.111.6798&rep=rep1&type=pdf
CORE ERLANG 1.0.3 language specification