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L4Ka::Pistachio microkernel
L4Ka::Pistachio is the latest L4 microkernel developed by the System Architecture Group at the
University of Karlsruhe in collaboration with the DiSy group at the
University of New South Wales, Australia. It is the first available
kernel implementation of the L4 Version 4 kernel API
(currently code-named Version X.2), which is fully 32 and 64 bit
clean, provides multiprocessor support, and super-fast local IPC.
The current release of L4Ka::Pistachio is version 0.4. Read the
official announcement
message.
L4Ka::Pistachio is built from ground up incorporating the research
results of the last seven years of microkernel and multi-server
research. The code is written in C++ with a strong focus on
performance and portability. The current release includes many of
today's widely used commodity architectures:
- AMD64 (Opteron 242, Simics)
- IA32 (Pentium and higher)
- PowerPC 32bit (IBM 750)
- PowerPC 64bit (Power3, Power4)
- Alpha (21164,rey 21264) [discontinued]
- ARM (SA1100, XScale, ARM925T) [discontinued]
- IA64 (Itanium1, Itanium2, Ski) [discontinued]
- MIPS 64bit (R4000, R5000) [discontinued]
The variety of supported architctures
makes L4Ka::Pistachio an ideal research and development platform for
a wide variety of systems. Additional architectural support for
UltraSparc is in progress.
The different hardware architectures are maintained by specific team members
located either at University of Karlsruhe (AMD64, IA32, PPC32, PPC64) or at UNSW
(Alpha, ARM, MIPS). The specific contact can be found on the respective
architecture page.
Documentation
- L4 Version X.2 Reference Manual (Latest snaphsot, July 19 2010)
- L4 Version X.2 Reference Manual (Rev. 6, May 4 2009)
- The reference manual serves as the defining document for the API
and all ABIs. Its key point is precise definition, not
explanation and illustration. Please note that Version X.2 is
still in an experimental stage and the interface may change
significantly. Features may be added, dropped, or modified without
notice.
- L4Ka::Pistachio Whitepaper
- This document gives a broad overview of the key features of
the Version 4 API and the L4Ka::Pistachio microkernel.
- L4Ka::Pistachio FAQ
- Frequently asked questions about L4Ka::Pistachio and some answers. This FAQ is maintained by the L4Ka::Pistachio user community.
- L4 System Programmer's Manual
- We plan to publish a developers manual describing design
concepts and reasoning for developers using the L4
Version 4 API. This document is supposed to picture construction
principles of systems on top of L4.
For further documents and publications refer to the publication section.
Discussions
- l4ka@ira.uka.de
mailing list (subscribe here)
- This mailing list is intended for all L4Ka related issues,
including L4Ka::Pistachio, API and architecture related topics. All core
developers are actively watching this list.
- Internet Relay Chat
- Sometimes, the members of the L4Ka team and UNSW are on channel
#elf|ka of irc.slashnet.org.
Availability
L4Ka::Pistachio is available for download as source and binary
tar-balls or via remote CVS. The source code is open source and
released under the two-clause BSD license.
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