I’ve seen this video of Timothy Roscoe at USENIX ATC '21 recently and was very interested in multikernel OSes.

While Barrelfish is abandoned, it seems that Kirsch is his successor.

However, since I’ve seen this video I wonder what changed since the keynote, why it doesn’t seem to be a thing for mainstream kernels and if there was any roadmap/will to expand mainstream kernels like linux to embrace the whole hardware.

Do you have any pointers/ideas or resources to share on this?

  • bitcrafter@programming.dev
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    13 days ago

    Interesting! I had not even realized that this was a problem, though it makes sense now after your description. How realistically feasible is this type of approach, though, given that the manufactures can always just ignore the kernel’s request to reprogram them and continue to access the bus and memory directly?

    • catloaf@lemm.ee
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      13 days ago

      Highly unrealistic without significantly redesigning the entire architecture, meaning all your existing equipment will not be compatible.