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News item for Genode 14.02

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Norman Feske 2014-02-28 11:18:53 +01:00
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Genode News
===========
Genode OS Framework release 14.02 | 2014-02-28
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| The two highlights of the new release are VirtualBox running on
| top of the NOVA microhypervisor and the added support for NetBSD's file
| systems. Furthermore, the release comes with new or largely revised
| storage components such as a block cache.
During the release cycle for version 14.02, the development was focused on the
topics storage and virtualization, both considered as fundamental for using
Genode as general-purpose OS.
Concerning storage, we took the chance to redesign the existing block-level
components to work asynchronously. This way, block requests can be processed
in a pipelined fashion and even out of order, which is beneficial to hide
device latencies and to maximize throughput. Additionally, there are entirely
new storage components, most prominently a new block cache, FUSE-based
file-system services, and support for the file systems of the NetBSD kernel.
The latter was made possible by the use of so-called rump kernels, which allow
the execution of individual NetBSD kernel subsystems at user level. We use it
to execute NetBSD's file systems as Genode components.
Virtualization has become a popular use case for microkernel technology. Until
now, however, none of Genode's existing virtualization options such as L4Linux
on top of Fiasco.OC or the Vancouver VMM on top of NOVA could be considered as
compelling alternatives to commodity virtualization products. With the added
support for running VirtualBox on top of the NOVA microhypervisor, we combine
the benefits of microkernel technology and capability-based security in
particular with a product-grade virtualization solution. Compared to the
traditional host operating systems supported by VirtualBox, using VirtualBox
on top of Genode/NOVA reduces the trusted computing base for the security of
virtual machines by more than three orders of magnitude. For existing Genode
users, VirtualBox opens up the ability to run a wide range of unmodified guest
operating systems such as GNU/Linux and MS Windows side by side with regular
Genode components.
As is the case for every release, there are many additional improvements all
over the place, for example unified interfaces for graphics, support for POSIX
signals in the Noux runtime for Unix programs, and a new pseudo file system
for the interactive exploration and tracing of Genode's process tree. These
and more topics are covered by the detailed
[http:/documentation/release-notes/14.02 - release documentation of version 14.02...]
Slides and videos of our FOSDEM talks | 2014-02-10
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