ICSA Colloquium - 23/11/2023

Title: L4Re and Kernkonzept: Sustaining a Microkernel-Based OS for the Real-World Use Cases

Abstract: For building safety and security critical software stacks, component-based software architecture approaches implemented by microkernel-based operating systems have shown to fit well. In this talk, we discuss what needs to be done to develop the academically successful L4Re project into a product that is also successfully deployed in commercial settings. We also talk about the crucial meeting points between industry, academia and the community.

More specifically, we delve into the use cases of customers of Kernkonzept and the required certification processes coming along with those use cases. We also reflect on the recent trends regarding lowering of the IPC overhead via hardware features, the introduction of hardware support for capabilities (CHERI, Morello) and the spread of heterogeneous computing, among other things. Finally, we examine the future collaboration potential.

Speaker's bio: Martin Decky is a life-long operating systems enthusiast and a passionate programmer, with fondness ranging from software engineering, fine-grained component software architecture and open source to formal verification, computer graphics and demoscene. He is the co-author of the HelenOS microkernel multiserver operating system which he has been contributing to since 2004.  

He received his Ph.D. in computer science at the Charles University in Prague in 2015. After spending 10 years in academia as a computer science researcher and teacher at the Charles University, he switched to a role of a senior research engineer at Huawei Technologies in Munich in 2017. In 2019, he co-founded the Dresden Research Center of Huawei Technologies focusing on microkernel technologies again and continued his work there as a principal research engineer. In 2021, he joined Kernkonzept GmbH and he is currently working on the L4Re microkernel-based operating system.