===================================== Genode Labs Newsletter - January 2011 ===================================== Content 1. Genode OS walk-through as screencast on YouTube 2. Milkymist platform featuring the Genode FX GUI stack 3. Genode OS reaches for further base platforms 1. Genode OS walk-through as screencast on YouTube -------------------------------------------------- We consider the bootable Live CD released in November as the most significant milestone of the Genode OS project so far. Prior the Live CD, the project was mainly geared to people with a profound technical understanding of operating systems and microkernels. Now, that has changed. The Live CD makes the unique capabilities of our architecture tangible to a much wider audience. To further lower the burden to get involved with Genode's concepts, we have now supplemented the Live CD with a screencast showing a guided walk-through of the Live CD: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJdWOmajo_8 2. Milkymist platform featuring the Genode FX GUI stack ------------------------------------------------------- Milkymist is currently one of the worlds most ambitious open-source hardware-software co-design efforts. The FPGA-based platform is built around a unique SoC design consisting of a LM32 softcore CPU and a rich set of IP cores such as a high-performance memory controller, controllers for various peripherals, and special- purpose functions, in particular for hardware-accelerated graphics. In contrast to commonly used FPGA-based SoCs, Milkymist does not depend on proprietary IP cores and tools other than a synthesis compiler. The hardware design is complemented with a software stack consisting of the RTEMS real-time operating system, device drivers interfacing the OS with the SoC hardware, and a custom firmware called Flicker- noise. We are excited that the Milkymist project selected the software stack of our Genode FPGA Graphics project as foundation for the Flickernoise GUI. In addition to the SoC and software developments, the project has now finished the work on a custom hardware called Milkymist One. In the spirit of Milkymist, the PCB layout was released under an open-source license as well. Milkymist One has now become ready to order. Please find more information on the project's website: http://www.milkymist.org/index.html So if you like to see a fully integrated open-source hardware- software platform in action or run the Genode FX software stack on an easily customizable platform, Milkymist One provides you with a perfect starting point. 3. Genode OS reaches for further base platforms ----------------------------------------------- The most unique property of the Genode OS Framework is its ability to run on different kernels while maintaining software compatibility. This way, we can easily combine the highly varying feature sets of different kernels with the steadily growing functionality of the software running on top of Genode. Within Genode Labs, we are currently busy with extending the platform support of the framework beyond the six kernels that are currently supported. On the one hand, with our stated goal to develop Genode towards a general-purpose OS platform, we reach for modern microkernel features such as capability-based security, hardware-assisted virtualization, and protected I/O access. But we are also looking at moving the framework to the space of devices with tight resource constrains, in particular FPGA-based SoCs. For pursuing the latter endeavour, we are extending our activities to kernel land and experiment with a novel interface between kernel and user mode. We plan to make first results of these activities available with the upcoming Genode version 11.02 to be released end of February. About the newsletter -------------------- If you have friends or colleagues who might be interested in our projects, we would appreciate you to forward this email. If you received this newsletter as a forwarded email, you may subscribe to the newsletter here: http://genode-labs.com/newsletter In the case of receiving this newsletter unintended, you can cancel your subscription at any time by replying to this email with the subject set to "unsubscribe". Best regards -- Dr.-Ing. Norman Feske Genode Labs http://www.genode-labs.com · http://genode.org Genode Labs GmbH · Amtsgericht Dresden · HRB 28424 · Sitz Dresden Geschäftsführer: Dr.-Ing. Norman Feske, Christian Helmuth
