I’ve seen this video of Timothy Roscoe at USENIX ATC '21 recently and was very interested in multikernel OSes.
While Barrelfish is abandoned, it seems that Kirsch is his successor.
However, since I’ve seen this video I wonder what changed since the keynote, why it doesn’t seem to be a thing for mainstream kernels and if there was any roadmap/will to expand mainstream kernels like linux to embrace the whole hardware.
Do you have any pointers/ideas or resources to share on this?
Interesting! I had not even realized that this was a problem, though it makes sense now after your description. How realistically feasible is this type of approach, though, given that the manufactures can always just ignore the kernel’s request to reprogram them and continue to access the bus and memory directly?
The system is complex plus a lot of legacy history. APTs for example (Advanced Persistent Threats). I think I have heard, that you can no longer guarantee that wiping the system and reinstalling the OS will eliminate them in all cases. They could for example burrow into the Firmware and Microcode.
Or look at Windows, MS has had huge problem with old drivers and other stuff they run at very high permission levels. Windows is full of stuff from 25 years ago when security did not matter.
Highly unrealistic without significantly redesigning the entire architecture, meaning all your existing equipment will not be compatible.