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It’s believed Nintendos consoles use a micro kernel but that’s a result of hacks and reverse engineering. However Nintendo themselves have given limited informa

It’s believed Nintendos consoles use a micro kernel but that’s a result of hacks and reverse engineering. However Nintendo themselves have given limited information. While I think your point is more likely than not, that caveat I’m making is still worth noting; ie things aren’t as certain as you’re boldly claiming. Now on to your point about the complaint the GP and myself made being FUD; it’s really not. The closest to a monolithic kernels performance any micro kernel has gotten was L4 and those benchmarks was running Linux on top of L4 vs bare metal Linux. While the work on L4 is massively impressive there is still a big caveat, the actual workload was still effectively ran on a monolithic kernel with L4 acting like a hypervisor. So most of the advantages that a micro kernel offers were rendered moot and there was still a small performance hit for it. Why doesn’t that matter for the Nintendo Switch? Probably because any DRM countermeasures in user space would have a bigger performance penalty and a micro kernel offers some protections there as part of the design. That’s just a guess but as I opened with, Nintendo are quite secretive about their system software so it’s hard to make the kind of conclusive arguments you like to claim.

tutfbhuf 6y ago
Even if unconfirmed, I think that Nintendo might use Microkernels according to reverse engeneering finds shows their massive potential for constrained devices. Although certainly not for performance reasons.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- laumars 6y ago
  > Even if unconfirmed, I think that Nintendo might use Microkernels according to reverse engeneering finds That was literally what I said :) > shows their massive potential for constrained devices. Although certainly not for performance reasons Games consoles are about as far removed from a constrained device as you could possibly get.
  - tutfbhuf 6y ago
    > Games consoles are about as far removed from a constrained device as you could possibly get. It seems to me that you are always ignore low-end devices and very old devices. If we are talking about an PS5 then yes, this and similar devices are not very constrained, even a full blown Kubuntu might run on some. But, again there are low-end gaming devices with a tiny black and white screen for 10 dollars and old gaming hardware with very tight constrains. The N64 is certainly one of those constrained old gaming devices.
    - laumars 6y ago
      N64 wouldn’t have been considered “constrained” when it was new though. To be honest it’s not really constrained even now, not compared to the sort of hardware you were discussing earlier. And it’s rather disingenuous how you keep rocking back and forth between current generation consoles and 20+ year old tech as if it’s all current hardware. It makes it rather hard to reply to your points when you then when the goal posts constantly get shifted. PS5 would easily run Linux considering the PS3 had a few Linux distros ported to it (back when Sony endorsed running Linux on their hardware via the “Other OS” option, which they later removed). Linux is pretty lightweight by modern hardware standards anyways. It’s just not suitable for every domain (but what OS is?) On then topic of consoles running Linux, pretty sure I have a CD-R somewhere with Linux for the Dreamcast. That was the era when consoles really started to converge on a modern-looking software development approach.
      - tutfbhuf 6y ago
        > And it’s rather disingenuous how you keep rocking back and forth between current generation consoles I never did. I never mentioned current generation consoles not even implicitly. I always talked either about the N64 or (gaming) devices that are constrained and cannot run linux.
        laumars 6y ago
        Except you did: “I think that Nintendo might use Microkernels [in the Switch] according to reverse engeneering finds shows their massive potential for constrained devices.” Maybe you hadn’t grokked that pjmlp was talking about the Switch (Nintendo’s current generation console) rather than the N64? Either way, my other comment[0] also applies: [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25559670 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25559670
pjmlp 6y ago
You just need to get the information the same way I did, https://developer.nintendo.com/ https://developer.nintendo.com/ Other than that I can only point out the CCC related Also given the amount of hypervisor and container baggage that gets placed on top of Linux to make for the lack of microkernel like safety, it doesn't really matter if it happens to win a couple of micro-benchmarks.
- laumars 6y ago
  Nintendo don’t publish detailed schematics of their systems to the level that you’re claiming. Not even on their developers portal. (I’ve had developer account with Nintendo since the Wii days). And with regards to your point about Linux vs micro kernels, it does make a massive difference when you’re talking about hardware like the N64 which wouldn’t want any of those features which micro kernels excel at and which every instruction wasted is going to cost the user experience heavily. This point was made abundantly clear at the start of the conversation as well. Look, I have nothing against micro kernels. There’s an architectual beauty to them which I really like. It’s the functional programming equivalent of kernel design. But pragmatically it wouldn’t be your silver bullet in the very specific context we were discussing (re N64). And to be honest I’m sick of you pulling these pathetic straw man arguments in every thread you post on.
  - pjmlp 6y ago
    No one forces you to read or reply to them, so whatever.
  - tutfbhuf 6y ago
    laumars, I think what I'm missing to hear from you is why microkernels are such a bad and horrible idea and more importantly why Nintendo itself is mistaken if they had used them on their devices. Otherwise, I still think they are a good fit.
    - laumars 6y ago
      They’re not a bad and horrible idea. I never once said that. Micro kernels are, in my opinion, the future of OS development because they offer a bunch of guarantees which are much harder to achieve with a monolithic kernel (like memory safety, stability (eg a segfault in a driver doesn’t bring down the entire kernel) and so on and so forth. The problem worth micro kernels is that abstraction isn’t free. That’s less of an issue with modern hardware running modern work loads because you’d need to put that memory safety in regardless of the kernel architecture and chips these days are fast enough that the benefits of security and safety far far outweigh the deminishing cost in performance. However on the N64 you don’t need any of the benefits that a micro kernel offers while you do need to preserve as many clock cycles as you can. So a micro kernel isn’t well suited for that specific domain. The case would be different again for any modern low footprint hardware because they’d still be running on CPUs clocked at an order of magnitude more and modern embedded system might need to take security or stability concerns more seriously than an air gapped 90s game console. In short, micro kernels are the future but the N64, being a retro system, needs an approach from the past. This is why it doesn’t help how modern and 90s hardware have been conflated as equivalent throughout this discussion.

tutfbhuf 6y ago

Even if unconfirmed, I think that Nintendo might use Microkernels according to reverse engeneering finds shows their massive potential for constrained devices. Although certainly not for performance reasons.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
laumars 6y ago
> Even if unconfirmed, I think that Nintendo might use Microkernels according to reverse engeneering finds That was literally what I said :) > shows their massive potential for constrained devices. Although certainly not for performance reasons Games consoles are about as far removed from a constrained device as you could possibly get.
- tutfbhuf 6y ago
  > Games consoles are about as far removed from a constrained device as you could possibly get. It seems to me that you are always ignore low-end devices and very old devices. If we are talking about an PS5 then yes, this and similar devices are not very constrained, even a full blown Kubuntu might run on some. But, again there are low-end gaming devices with a tiny black and white screen for 10 dollars and old gaming hardware with very tight constrains. The N64 is certainly one of those constrained old gaming devices.
  - laumars 6y ago
    N64 wouldn’t have been considered “constrained” when it was new though. To be honest it’s not really constrained even now, not compared to the sort of hardware you were discussing earlier. And it’s rather disingenuous how you keep rocking back and forth between current generation consoles and 20+ year old tech as if it’s all current hardware. It makes it rather hard to reply to your points when you then when the goal posts constantly get shifted. PS5 would easily run Linux considering the PS3 had a few Linux distros ported to it (back when Sony endorsed running Linux on their hardware via the “Other OS” option, which they later removed). Linux is pretty lightweight by modern hardware standards anyways. It’s just not suitable for every domain (but what OS is?) On then topic of consoles running Linux, pretty sure I have a CD-R somewhere with Linux for the Dreamcast. That was the era when consoles really started to converge on a modern-looking software development approach.
    - tutfbhuf 6y ago
      > And it’s rather disingenuous how you keep rocking back and forth between current generation consoles I never did. I never mentioned current generation consoles not even implicitly. I always talked either about the N64 or (gaming) devices that are constrained and cannot run linux.
      - laumars 6y ago
        Except you did: “I think that Nintendo might use Microkernels [in the Switch] according to reverse engeneering finds shows their massive potential for constrained devices.” Maybe you hadn’t grokked that pjmlp was talking about the Switch (Nintendo’s current generation console) rather than the N64? Either way, my other comment[0] also applies: [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25559670 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25559670

pjmlp 6y ago

You just need to get the information the same way I did, https://developer.nintendo.com/ https://developer.nintendo.com/ Other than that I can only point out the CCC related Also given the amount of hypervisor and container baggage that gets placed on top of Linux to make for the lack of microkernel like safety, it doesn't really matter if it happens to win a couple of micro-benchmarks.

laumars 6y ago
Nintendo don’t publish detailed schematics of their systems to the level that you’re claiming. Not even on their developers portal. (I’ve had developer account with Nintendo since the Wii days). And with regards to your point about Linux vs micro kernels, it does make a massive difference when you’re talking about hardware like the N64 which wouldn’t want any of those features which micro kernels excel at and which every instruction wasted is going to cost the user experience heavily. This point was made abundantly clear at the start of the conversation as well. Look, I have nothing against micro kernels. There’s an architectual beauty to them which I really like. It’s the functional programming equivalent of kernel design. But pragmatically it wouldn’t be your silver bullet in the very specific context we were discussing (re N64). And to be honest I’m sick of you pulling these pathetic straw man arguments in every thread you post on.
- pjmlp 6y ago
  No one forces you to read or reply to them, so whatever.
- tutfbhuf 6y ago
  laumars, I think what I'm missing to hear from you is why microkernels are such a bad and horrible idea and more importantly why Nintendo itself is mistaken if they had used them on their devices. Otherwise, I still think they are a good fit.
  - laumars 6y ago
    They’re not a bad and horrible idea. I never once said that. Micro kernels are, in my opinion, the future of OS development because they offer a bunch of guarantees which are much harder to achieve with a monolithic kernel (like memory safety, stability (eg a segfault in a driver doesn’t bring down the entire kernel) and so on and so forth. The problem worth micro kernels is that abstraction isn’t free. That’s less of an issue with modern hardware running modern work loads because you’d need to put that memory safety in regardless of the kernel architecture and chips these days are fast enough that the benefits of security and safety far far outweigh the deminishing cost in performance. However on the N64 you don’t need any of the benefits that a micro kernel offers while you do need to preserve as many clock cycles as you can. So a micro kernel isn’t well suited for that specific domain. The case would be different again for any modern low footprint hardware because they’d still be running on CPUs clocked at an order of magnitude more and modern embedded system might need to take security or stability concerns more seriously than an air gapped 90s game console. In short, micro kernels are the future but the N64, being a retro system, needs an approach from the past. This is why it doesn’t help how modern and 90s hardware have been conflated as equivalent throughout this discussion.