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Cell phone baseband and virtualization supervisor hosts are the only niches where L4 gained any traction. Considering the lack of publicly available informatio

Cell phone baseband and virtualization supervisor hosts are the only niches where L4 gained any traction. Considering the lack of publicly available information about baseband operating environments, those could actually be the same niche (ie, L4 is acting as a hypervisor for the baseband). Hurd-on-L4 was a flop. Fuscha went a completely different direction with dissimilar communication primitives. From the outside, L4 looks like a perfect example of a line of academic research that has no industrial relevance.

johndoe0815 5y ago
I think some people from industry would disagree. Certainly L4 has found use cases mostly in the field of embedded systems, but I wouldn't call this a niche (or at least it's a pretty big one). Companies like Hensoldt Cyber (https://hensoldt-cyber.com https://hensoldt-cyber.com - Gernot Heiser is involved in this) but also SYSGO with PikeOS (an independently developed L4-family microkernel - https://www.sysgo.com https://www.sysgo.com), Kernkonzept (https://www.kernkonzept.com https://www.kernkonzept.com) or Genode Labs (https://genode.org https://genode.org) have successfully used and deployed L4-based systems with many customers from industry. Yes, this is again very much focused on Germany, but that's also where a lot of the research was done. Fuchsia at Google is probably a result of the "not-invented-here" syndrome that seems to be popular at Google. I haven't taken a closer look at the system but would certainly be interested in reading about the differences to an L4-based microkernel. And Hurd-on-L4 is certainly coming next year ;-) (or a bit later, due to Corona or so...).
- saithound 5y ago
  Other active seL4 users include Real-Time Innovations (autonomous systems), Cog Systems (connected devices), Raytheon (defense/aerospace), DornerWorks (IoT/medical), Ghost (self-driving cars), Penten (communications securty).
- tilt_error 5y ago
  Oh yes: https://xkcd.com/1508/ https://xkcd.com/1508/
- flo123456 5y ago
  There is also Cyberus Technology which develops Hedron, yet another L4-based microkernel and ships that as part of a secure workstation targeted at the german government market. There’s quite a community that has taken the research to successful industry applications over here in Dresden, Germany. :-) If you’re interested in some of the stories behind the technology I can recommend the Syslog Podcast at https://syslog.show https://syslog.show

johndoe0815 5y ago

I think some people from industry would disagree. Certainly L4 has found use cases mostly in the field of embedded systems, but I wouldn't call this a niche (or at least it's a pretty big one). Companies like Hensoldt Cyber (https://hensoldt-cyber.com https://hensoldt-cyber.com - Gernot Heiser is involved in this) but also SYSGO with PikeOS (an independently developed L4-family microkernel - https://www.sysgo.com https://www.sysgo.com), Kernkonzept (https://www.kernkonzept.com https://www.kernkonzept.com) or Genode Labs (https://genode.org https://genode.org) have successfully used and deployed L4-based systems with many customers from industry. Yes, this is again very much focused on Germany, but that's also where a lot of the research was done. Fuchsia at Google is probably a result of the "not-invented-here" syndrome that seems to be popular at Google. I haven't taken a closer look at the system but would certainly be interested in reading about the differences to an L4-based microkernel. And Hurd-on-L4 is certainly coming next year ;-) (or a bit later, due to Corona or so...).

saithound 5y ago
Other active seL4 users include Real-Time Innovations (autonomous systems), Cog Systems (connected devices), Raytheon (defense/aerospace), DornerWorks (IoT/medical), Ghost (self-driving cars), Penten (communications securty).
tilt_error 5y ago
Oh yes: https://xkcd.com/1508/ https://xkcd.com/1508/
flo123456 5y ago
There is also Cyberus Technology which develops Hedron, yet another L4-based microkernel and ships that as part of a secure workstation targeted at the german government market. There’s quite a community that has taken the research to successful industry applications over here in Dresden, Germany. :-) If you’re interested in some of the stories behind the technology I can recommend the Syslog Podcast at https://syslog.show https://syslog.show