Stefan Kalkowski

Transplanting device drivers out of the Linux kernel has a long history in microkernel-based operating systems. While being economically attractive, in contrast to developing all drivers from scratch, one still has to deal with complex APIs and semantics. Therefore, the porting process can be demanding and tiring together, which leads to new sources of errors.

Over the years the team around the Genode OS framework has collected a lot of experiences by porting device drivers out of the Linux kernel. Different approaches were followed. Recently, the methodology got reviewed again, new tools were developed, and the process got accelerated substantially. At the same time, the environment for device drivers in Genode got unified in between all architectures, and low-level platform support was enhanced. As a result it is now much easier and faster to port Genode to new boards, or SoCs.

The talk provides an insight into the new porting methodology and tools. It summarizes the results from this new approach that were achieved within a couple of months, and will show them in a short tech-demo.

The Genode project has evolved over the past decade into a versatile toolkit for general-purpose computing. Even though support for ARM embedded devices is an inherent part of it since the very beginning, the focus of the past years was more x86-Architecture centered. Sculpt, the desktop incarnation of Genode, being the prime example. Recently, Genode's ARMv8 port ignited extensive development efforts to support more sophisticated workloads on top of modern embedded and mobile devices.

The talk provides an overview about the current ARMv8 Genode landscape, its ambitions and potential. It will live demonstrate recent achievements from device support up to hardware-assisted virtualization on top of the NXP i.MX8 SoC.

The talk introduces ARM's security extensions called TrustZone, and how they are used to run a guest OS on top of Genode's native ARM kernel. It is a hands on experience talk covering pitfalls and blind alleys on the road to success.

The Genode OS framework, which generally runs on top of various kernels, also contains a kernel library that allows Genode to run directly on bare ARM hardware. Therefore, the so called hw-kernel provides exactly the mechanisms required by Genode, making it in particular low-complex and at large understandable. This makes this kernel the ideal playground to do various experiments, including testing new hardware features. In this talk, the kernel will be briefly described, followed by an adventure report about our experiments with TrustZone support in Genode. The hw-kernel is used to executed an almost fully featured Genode system within the "secure world", while Android is executed concurrently in the "non-secure world" of TrustZone. The talk will include a short demo showing the results of these experiments.

The podium will consist of representatives of all the OS projects participating in the devroom. This is thought as an interactive event. The audience will have the opportunity to ask questions, which will be answered by all representatives.

Other people: Martin Děcký Norman Feske Samuel Thibault Björn Döbel Nils Asmussen

Welcome to the Microkernel and component based operating-systems devroom

One shiny aspect of the Genode OS framework is its diversity with respect to microkernels and hardware platforms it's running on top of. Although primarily of interest to clients and users, this property provides some hidden benefits to the system-developer itself. This talk is basically an experience report. It will give you an insight into the benefits and troubles of developing on a diverse biotope, the strength and weaknesses of the available platforms, how Genode gets ported to a kernel, and what is basically necessary from the kernel's perspective to drive Genode. The last point will be illustrated by introducing recent developments of a hybrid kernel/user API in Genode.