Thank you, thank you. Thanks for the introduction and it's a great pleasure and great honor
to be here again. Yes, this is the last talk of this in the room so it won't be too technical
so don't worry if you are already tired and why talk about this, why trying to do this
perspective? Well, it's really the 15th of the room this year so 15 years depending on
how you counted since Jakubirmar started this tradition in 2012 and there have been some
166 talks by 80 distinct speakers about 45 distinct projects during this the room in
the past 15 years including older unicorns and other friends that we have and 15 years that's
quite a lot of history already I think you know 15 years if your child was this stall now it's
probably graduating from Guy High School right so maybe we should look back well even the world order
can change in such a time so what probably didn't change in all those 15 years I think what
didn't change is the significance of micro kernels and I think that this this audience is
approved to that that we still believe in this idea now different people have different
different reasons to work on micro kernels therefore we have different micro kernels
emerging systems and that's perfectly fine but I would say that if there is one single
underlying common denominator it's the fact that we believe that from this software architecture
the micro kernel approach is just a little bit better than the monolithic approach of course
there's nothing wrong with having lot of features in an operating system but the problem
atic part is when all those features form a single point of failure and I think Norman Fesca
really describe it very nicely 15 years ago using his bull gun shift or castle ship analogy
which I have redrawn using AI like this so you know monolithic systems looks like this beautiful nice
a lot of diversity a lot of features but everything is on this single wooden ship without any
bull to tight bulkheads you know do you really trust this is this really the best way we should
implement our software a different point or different take on this if you if you look on the
size of the Linux kernel binary plus some of the required kernel modules not all of them just
those that are required or not typical the machine you get to something like 150 megabytes of code
and data that's comparable to other monolithic software packages like triple aid games or software
sweets and things like that all right but would you run that in a kernel mode would you allow
would you trust your web browser to directly access your hardware without any any you know
moderation layer I leave the conclusions too so what did change in those 15 years and this is
quite important I think and maybe you might say that I'm overly positive but I really believe this
since 2012 micro kernels are actually in the mainstream now you have multiple real-world operating
systems based on the micro kernel design that are running on millions of smart devices you have
millions of cars running micro kernels as hypervisors you have millions of smart appliances running
micro kernels as the user facing operating system like google fuchsia you have millions of
smartphones a lot of running harmony always next so I think I hope I believe that people are finally
you know forgetting all those unfounded anxieties about micro kernels I mean it's not always ideal
but I think there's some some progress and instead of that they are embracing their true potential
without without worries so we have seen some wonderful demos today already I have just a couple
of snapshots here so this is google nest with google fuchsia this is harmony always next running on
surprisingly not so not so recent but but still very nice Huawei phone so yes this is an actual
micro kernel based operating system with all the user facing goodies you would expect and
actually the framework the RQI if I'm not mistaken is the same that that has been previously used
by the Linux based harmony OS so so you have even that continuity so to sum up micro kernels are in
the mainstream now let's take a short trip down the memory line and let's look on some of the
interesting talks that have been presented here at the micro kernel the room of course this is my
selection so if your favorite talk is not being mentioned that's not personal that's just just my
selection but I really recommend you if you have the time going to that old talks and
you might think you might find some interesting ideas there still so this is my this is my selection
in the first year most there were mostly introductory talks so if you would like to compare the
basic architecture of g note Nova Helena was feel free to go there g note already presented
that there is this agony of choice in case of g note because it's not just an operating system it's
an operating system framework that that actual supports I don't know how many it is today but
six seven micro kernels and even a monolithic kernel which is interesting I mean the the type
this is coming from from the original title I don't think it's wrong it I think it's great and I
still remember this quote from the panel discussion by Jacob Germas where he said that Helena was
implements the MFS driver so that there is a migration path for the minics three
Helena was I think it was meant half jokingly back then but yeah I think it's less of a joke nowadays
so this is this is the photo from that panel session 20 13 we have learned that Gidoo Hort is
alive and well we have we have seen a confirmation today but at least for me that that was a surprise
that this operating system based on the on the first generation micro kernel is still quite
quite working and progressing they have been several talks on learning from past mistakes which is
always good and there were several talks describing how operating system projects are
maturing from academic endeavors to practical usability and maturity and probably the most important
point from those talks is try to eat your own dog food whenever possible it really helps
2014 this was the year when Anticanta announced ramp kernels it was them which I believe made a
huge impact Gino would also introduce they their base HW their own micro kernel
Helena was got a sound stack and L4E got commercial so again another move from academia to
to to the real world so to speak. Jacob Germas announced my paternal dot info which is still an
interesting site hopefully that that sort of points you to all the existing open source micro kernels
I'm currently trying to maintain it if there's your favorite project missing please let me know
sense and the poor quest and there was a very interesting talk that I really believe we should
review from time to time by Vasily where he made a very good case for implementing practical security
measures even in micro kernels things like not executable memory address space randomization
and stuff like that because the world is complicated having a nice architecture that sort of
prevents certain types of issues by itself is nice but there are other types of issues that
should be also prevented I mean just recently L4E was in the middle of security vulnerable to that
was not caused by L4E or the micro kernel but the vulnerability was caused by improper use
of that building blocks and yeah maybe if there would be even more strict security measures
maybe those people would simply not be not be able to use it in such a wrong way I don't know
2015 SEL4 joins our community which was nice there was also there were also two talks about
let's say small projects maybe a single person operating system projects but it's always
great to see people learning by doing and while doing that discovering new ideas that we
old-farts just have forgotten to discover or just fail to discover and I think this year's the
room follows that tradition nicely and actually Al4E implements stake galleries I'm not sure if
this was a direct direct direction to Vasily or not but yeah we've we've done something to improve
improve the security even without changing the architecture
2016 G note announced there's support for SEL4 so extending their set of supported
supported micro kernels by yet another one good newsboard gains a lot of usability features
that we still see the results today thanks to ramp kernels like sound support and USB support
and Gianluka also introduced his own micro kernel again presenting some fresh interesting ideas
on scheduling and what you can even consider to be a schedulable entity in an operating system
kernel 2017 probably the largest attendance of a single single talk was happening here when there was
the first introduction of the redox OS to this devroom and this really shows that it's never
right to come to a party I mean you can always come up with something new something interesting
I don't know why surprise I'll be making more popular than Linux 3 at least measuring by
the number of downloads so you see the the migration path for the Linux file system is really needed
and the new world talk showed a nice way how you can use virtualization in a micro kernel
by an operating system without actual implementing kind of an extra just using the basic principles
that the operating system I mean the micro kernel already provides by using subhertz wonderful
2018 I mean there were certainly more talks but this one stuck to my mind scout OS was introduced by the
genode guys you know just to explain genode is an operating system framework so it's a set of components
that you are supposed to take and build your custom operating system out of it while
while scout OS is a distribution of that components so to speak which you can actually use as
as a as your daily driver I don't want to take credit for this but I was really pushing
pushing Norman to do this for many many years so I hope I at least contributing contributed to
that idea so that you know he did it so that I shut up I don't know 2019 genode introduced
a kernel agnostic virtual machine manager again on a technical level an amazing feed because
if you compare the different interfaces that the different micro kernels provide for virtualization
and making sure that you can have a single binary that supports all of them that's amazing
unicarnals were getting stronger so there were several unicarnal talks unicraft OSV if I'm
mistaken and others and again one reality check which shows that the nice of architecture is amazing
unless you are dealing with buggy and useless hardware so since Alphoree needs to support
real world computers with real world hardware world vulnerabilities we need to face some unpleasant
mitigation efforts in the micro kernel itself to provide some end-to-end security and safety to our
customers 2020 so that was almost world's largest super spreading event for COVID I mean I
mean I wanted to present it as a joke but it was quite amazing that we narrowly escape this so
that we narrowly escape this fate I wouldn't like for them to be in the textbooks for this
but yeah also looking on the positive on the bright side of that for many people that was the last
large event which they attended before we had to do the two or three year break
that was M3 presented again a way how to take the micro kernel idea as we know it and push it
even further push it into new grounds by incorporating hardware software code design
there was this big resurrection of Nova so Udo was here presenting his new
old new involvement in it and presenting the his the R&V8 port and more news to come
and the next year this was my micro kernel room I'm not sure how yours looked like but you know
this was the matrix chat this was the the presenter screen and this is you know the output
the streaming that all the other participants saw and you know in the beginning you know
for in the first half of the day it did not really work so well so yeah the infrastructure
was under under stress but eventually it won't find and G note presented they're
probably the device drivers it's one highlight from that year
2022 the infrastructure got much better I think there were almost no glitches this time but we
are still sitting in front of our machines at home or whenever wherever and G note presented
G note lives presented G note on pine phone and there was yet another newcomer
managarm fully asynchronous micro kernel based system which I'm still surprised how they managed
to achieve such a large degree of Linux compatibility in such a short time but they really
focused on that and it's an amazing feat and an interesting project to to follow
and in 2023 we were back to Brussels finally and G note presented their new approach of
reusing Linux drivers again this this is a topic that has been done maybe six maybe seven maybe
ten times before in different ways but there was there there was still obviously a
currently a possibility to do it in a better way for 11th time and this is what G note and
other projects are using right now we have also known that Google Fuchsia is one of the
most widely used micro kernels at least at that moment and there was yet another newcomer
ours or helios this time let's just a new micro kernel but a new micro kernel implemented
in a completely new systems programming language what more could you could you want 2024 this is
this is something that I'm not really happy about somebody just decided that 200 and
40 minutes of micro kernel talks should be enough for everyone so the length of the of the
level has been shortened okay let's move on I don't want to say anything better about it
now I fully embrace trusted and confidential computing that that year or at least that was presented here
so again jumping on a new trend in the industry and G note presented there
new build system or cross compilation build system which I think also is very very important and
maybe useful for for you too and last year again a newcomer CMRX a new real-time embedded
MMU less micro kernel built from grounds up and presenting new interesting ideas
L4E went through some certification efforts which are some hard ways how to get into safety
critical systems monogarm and redox was fighting some uphill battle with some old unique monsters like
canceling for success calls and signals again something that most of the micro kernel systems
eventually need to face because Linux compatibility is still important to many people and also something
that nobody is looking forward to and G note also embraces trusted boot so that was the history
this micro background that room today was amazing great selection of talks I will be reviewing
most of them and so I think the future is bright thank you very much
I guess there are no questions today so so have a safe trip home or enjoy Brussels if you still can
and see you next year hopefully